


Weightless: Two Roads Diverged

by bellinaball



Series: Weight [6]
Category: Glee
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe, Past Rape/Non-con, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-18 08:08:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11870148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellinaball/pseuds/bellinaball
Summary: Blaine Anderson gave up the slave he'd been gifted, even though the world would never expect it of anyone.It's harder than he thought to let go.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone once followed this account: I bet you really didn't expect to see a notification again.
> 
> I was looking at a map of where the eclipse would hit today and I noticed it passing over a little town that I once used in a story. In the interim I've started and finished a degree that kept me busy and away from writing. Now I have more free time, so I reread everything. That was some nostalgia! I then realized that I, much to my surprise, really did want to finish off two main threads that Weight of the World, Weightless, and the smaller follow-ups had left unanswered.
> 
> You will need to read those two main stories to have any idea what's going on here. (I've linked this story as part of that series, to find them. Or I guess you could just look at my archive, since I joined AO3 for this.) It was sort of funny reading the early stuff that was prompted by someone's fic meme request, since the characterization asked for is very, very fanon-based. I tried to mature everything in this story, which looks at how Blaine's life changed after the events in The Weight of the World. The final story, which I'll also post soon, gives Kurt his happy ending.
> 
> I'll post all of this story first, and then that one. I've got a lot written and hope to post a chapter every day or two. For anyone stumbling across this, just in case you missed the tag: there are discussions of violence and rape in this universe. Be warned.
> 
> If anyone finds this series again after so long, I hope you enjoy its real conclusion!

Blaine had never seen his parents so angry before.

"You spoiled brat," his father spat.

"We took out a second mortgage," his mother said. She looked stunned, and like the alcohol in her hand was the only thing keeping her from being completely overwhelmed. It wasn't quite eleven in the morning. "You just threw all of that away."

Thirty minutes earlier, he'd gotten home. It wasn't that long of a trip to Lima and he'd left his driveway very early in the morning. He would have been back in front of his parents far before this if he hadn't sat in the parking lot of some Target for more than an hour, wondering just what the hell he was supposed to say.

He hadn't found any better explanation than the truth. His parents had bought him what they—and the rest of the world—thought was a tremendous gift. There existed beautiful creatures with huge, spectacular wings. Since whoever'd first named them apparently possessed very little creativity, those creatures were called Angels. They wore golden collars that could shock them if they misbehaved and kept them within a certain range of their owner. They were as loyal as a pet, as compliant as a courtesan, and as valuable as a Van Gogh.

That was how they were marketed, anyway.

That was exactly how Blaine had felt when he got a controller for a birthday present. It was completely unexpected because it was completely impossible for someone in suburban Ohio to be given one, even if that someone was well off. He'd felt like some member of the Upper East Side social elite and began playing that unimaginably privileged role with gusto. His Angel wasn't well trained, though. It talked back. It didn't do what it was supposed to, it didn't praise him like he'd expected, and it didn't love when Blaine gave his virginity to something that was supposed to exist to please him.

And then he realized that 'it' was a person.

Unlike every gossip column and entertainment show had told him since he could remember, Angels were people. They were people just like him who'd been abducted, tortured, and sold into slavery. And he'd raped one of them. The thought still chilled his blood.

If Blaine's parents had suspected that he now viewed collars and controllers with horror, he never could have gotten away with selling Kurt back to his father in Lima. They would have stopped him well before that, and forced him to sell Kurt to someone else to make their money back. He hadn't told them, though, and so his plan succeeded.

But after he finished his plan, the day kept going. He had to come home and reveal that he didn't have his controller any more, nor the slave they'd bought for him. His mother practically screamed when she'd learned what he'd done. His father left work as soon as she called.

They'd been yelling at him for a long time, now, and he'd stopped listening as he sat there at the dining table. He'd had ample opportunity to look over his decision from every angle. He remembered the haughty (and revolting) airs he'd put on in front of his friends. He remembered play-acting at sophistication by torturing a slave, because that's just what people did. That was what the world aspired to be.

"I'm taking back all of the money we've saved for your college," his father said, and Blaine's head jerked back up.

"What? But... every school I've looked at is...." Private. In New York. Expensive. And since he'd been counting on that college fund, he didn't have any other way to pay for things.

"You obviously don't care about our money or respect us," his father snapped. "Then I suppose I don't need to give a damn about you, either."

"Honey, hold on," said his mother. "There will be penalties for early withdrawal, and—"

"I don't care." His father's eyes narrowed. "Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Nothing," Blaine said after a long pause. Kurt had looked so happy when he was safe in his father's arms. Blaine's parents were treating him like he'd wrecked an expensive car while taking a joyride. Would they even care that Kurt had the same eyes as the father he'd been taken from?

"Nothing. You have nothing to say."

"No." With a sudden sick surge, Blaine's memory of Kurt in that garage shifted to another moment: when he'd claimed his stubborn, troublesome _property_ like a good _owner_ should. He'd thought it was a thing in front of him, not a person, and Blaine had taken his selfish pleasure like the whole world told him he was lucky to do. "No, Dad. I don't have anything to say to you. Not after the two of you encouraged me to be a rapist for my—"

His head rang. His mother had slapped him, he realized dizzily. He would have expected his father to snap first, with how angry he was.

"That is not funny." Her breathing was too fast. "I will not let my son call himself that."

It didn't change things, though. He'd eventually seen that Kurt was a person even with those wings on his back. That didn't mean that Kurt hadn't also been a person when Blaine forced him to the ground. When he'd hurt him over and over and hadn't cared, because that's how owners were supposed to act. The world thought that letting an Angel misbehave and embarrass their owner was a mark of shame, but they apparently didn't shame someone for raping a kidnapped child.

"Where is it?" his father asked after a deep, steadying breath. "I'll get my lawyer and get it back."

"I will never tell you where he is," Blaine said, hitting the pronoun hard.

After a long, silent assessment, his father nodded. "Fine. Consider your college fund gone."

That hurt. What he'd done was the only thing he could do and even pretend to be a halfway decent person, but it still hurt. 

"Can I just go to my room?" he asked, suddenly tired. "I assume I'm grounded for the rest of the summer."

"You are extremely lucky," his father said, "that we've already paid for your full year's tuition." Dalton offered a discount, that way. Blaine's father had always taken money very, very seriously.

He didn't feel lucky. He didn't want to see those other boys from school who also aspired to climb the social ladder high enough to own an Angel, and who'd encouraged him down that hellish road he'd walked. Without another word, Blaine stood, walked up the stairs, and stepped into his room. The large pet bed he'd added along one wall twisted his stomach anew. When he saw a stray white feather in a corner, his nausea turned into a deep, stabbing pain. Should he get rid of it? Or would it be terrible to throw it in the trash? He compromised by shutting it in a drawer.

His parents were still arguing. They did much better when everything was going smoothly. When they'd bought Kurt, things were going well, but then Blaine had 'wasted their money' and his father's company had unexpectedly missed their goals for the second quarter running. Theirs wasn't a household that did well with stress. He had the feeling that the argument that had started with his decision would spiral into much more, like kicking over a rock only for a hundred hidden insects to come pouring out.

Later, he really wished that he'd been wrong about that.

"But why do we need to sell?" he asked again. It sounded like the judge was going to award his mother a comfortable alimony payment. His father had turned his company around for the third quarter, apparently, though that good fortune didn't come early enough to fix the stress fractures he now realized had been building for years. He and his mother probably had enough money to stay in their house.

"I don't want to look inside every room and remember your father," his mother said shortly, and Blaine sighed. He understood that. He didn't want to move to another house, but at the same time, he wouldn't mind living somewhere that wasn't tainted with the memories of the terrible things he'd done in those rooms.

The new house wasn't anywhere near as spacious as their previous one. It was certainly nice, but it was a standard three-bedroom home with a two-car garage and no separate room called a 'parlor.' "I stuck some of the extra away," his mother mentioned as they were unpacking boxes. She'd stopped wearing the Hamptons-inspired clothing in dull neutrals, at least for her full outfits. His father had always wanted them to look like they fit into the life he led. Now, the pressure wasn't quite so intense. "This cost a lot less than the old place."

Blaine hesitated, wondered if she meant to replace his college fund, and then continued unwrapping her old baton trophies from high school. He didn't want to jinx anything. He knew taking Kurt back home had been the right thing to do, and he'd never regretted it... but at the same time, he would like it if he could go to college without being crushed by the student loans.

Even as he unpacked his own trophies in his new, smaller room, without the grand views he'd had before, he never questioned that he'd done the right thing. The only question he ever had was whether he could let himself drive by that garage again, to see if Mr. Hummel was still there and working. He'd obviously never show himself to the man again. Talking to him was beyond even considering. He'd wanted to give Kurt his real life back, and intruding into it as his former owner would do the exact opposite of that.

Once he decided that he couldn't check on Mr. Hummel, he decided that he couldn't look up anything else about Kurt's life. He'd probably been in a choir in his old school, but Blaine didn't need to know that for sure. He didn't need to know the name of the high school. He didn't need to know anything about the boy he'd victimized. It was the right thing to do.

Packing that feather and taking it with him to his new house... that probably hadn't been the right thing.

He couldn't make himself give it up, though.

So he needed to do everything else right.

* * *

On a snowy night in November, ice gripped Blaine's heart and squeezed. In front of him was a local news report about how a group of football players from McKinley High had stolen—not kidnapped—Lima's very own Angel.

He'd seen Kurt get injured; one of his own friends had cut him out of simple curiosity. Because of that, Blaine knew exactly what Angels' golden blood looked like. It was beautiful, liquid sunlight, and it was no wonder that some Angels ended up with sadistic owners who wanted to see it over, and over, and over.

When the news cameras zeroed in on the broken, still figure in Burt Hummel's arms, lying on a snowy highway next to the marks he'd made as he skidded, Blaine knew exactly how hurt an Angel would have to be to glow that much. _He must have died again,_ Blaine thought with deep shock. He'd watched Kurt fall from the sky, paralyzed by his collar as it fired, and land hard enough to snap his neck. He knew it was possible for Angels to heal and resurrect after mortal injuries.

Living through all the wounds in front of him, though... that was impossible.

_I never should have sold him back._

This was what he'd sold him for? Hot, angry tears filled his eyes. This was what that father of his had let happen to his own son? Burt Hummel had let Kurt be kidnapped and tortured and _killed_ , even after his unlikely return? Blaine never would have let that happen. He never would have been so careless. He never, ever should have sold Kurt back.

Two weeks later, he couldn't take it any more. The local news had long since stopped talking about Kurt at all, or even the boys who'd attacked him, and so he had no idea how Kurt was doing. He felt responsible for the boy he'd hurt so deeply, and who he'd apparently abandoned to an even more hellish fate. He had to know. He had to know if Kurt was all right, now.

With a determined expression and both hands firmly on the wheel, Blaine drove back to Lima.

"Excuse me?" he called out to an employee at the garage. There were a lot more people working there than when he'd stopped by the first time. Then, it had felt like walking into a tomb.

"Hi, can I help you?"

Blaine smiled in the stranger's direction, but scanned the interior behind him. He didn't see Burt Hummel anywhere. "Um, hello. I'm trying to find the owner? Mr. Hummel? I needed to ask him something."

The employee's face was suddenly very professional. "He left. Can I help you with anything?"

"He left?" Blaine repeated with a sinking feeling in his stomach. But... where? He couldn't have sold the controller again, could he? If he hadn't, then Kurt would have left, too. Kurt couldn't just _leave_ , not with that news story about him still filling Blaine's head. He had to know that the boy he'd hurt would be all right. He had to. There was only one question that might save him, and so he asked it: "Do you know when he's coming back?"

"He's not. Can I help you with something?"

"I. Well." It was probably a bad idea to drive right now. Dizziness swept him. "I think I'm due for an oil change."

"Sure, pull it in to that bay straight ahead."

 _He left,_ Blaine thought while sitting in the small, warm customer waiting area. _He left, and I don't know if he's safe._ Only then did he let himself acknowledge the motivation that had been driving him ever since that night in front of the television. Blaine became quietly disgusted with himself. _He left... after I thought that I never should have taken him home in the first place._

He still hadn't given up on being an owner.

When he got home, Blaine took the single feather out of his desk drawer and studied it. He was still holding on. Despite himself, he was still holding on to the boy he'd tortured. Some part of him felt that freeing him had been wrong.

It was almost impossibly hard to do, but he walked into his bathroom, held that feather over the bathtub, and burned it to ash. After letting go a long, shaky sigh, he turned on the water and let that time in his life wash down the drain.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artie is definitely a secondary character in this, but there's also a dangling thread with him that was barely resolved in the main story. I need to give some context to what happens next, along with addressing that, so... while the majority of the story is about Blaine, for now I'm saying hello to Artie.

"New York: the City That Never Sleeps. A teeming metropolis driven to prove themselves at every hour of every day, because there's always someone who wants it just a little bit more."

"This is very impressive, Artie," Rachel said as she watched his video clip for his intermediate editing class. "Were there really that many lights?"

Artie laughed and shook his head at his laptop, where Rachel's head bobbed in a chat window. His video commentary on Times Square had been playing on her screen. More than anyone else he knew, he thought she'd appreciate the Broadway connection. "I, um, may have gone a little nutso with the effects." He'd enjoyed that post-production class a little too much.

"I was wondering. That was you doing the voiceover, right?"

"Yeah. Did it work?" He'd worried that he sounded too melodramatic.

"Completely. It was the perfect level of intensity for the throbbing urban heart of New York."

Actually, maybe he shouldn't be asking Rachel Berry if something was too melodramatic. "Anyway," Artie said, "thanks for the feedback." He liked the new people he'd met at his film school in New York, and had friends there, but even well into his program he was still surprised at how much he missed his old group from high school. It didn't help that none of the old friends who should be with him there were. Either their lives had veered wildly off-course after The Day When They Heard About The Wings, or, well... or they didn't have a Social Security number any more and couldn't have applied to school, anyway.

That would have been a normal wrap-up to their call, but Rachel seemed to suspect that something was up. "Was there something else you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Yeah." Artie checked over his shoulder to make sure that his roommate hadn't returned. Elden was filming footage in Philadelphia for an especially ambitious project, no matter how many times their professor told him that it wouldn't earn him any extra credit. He should be gone through the end of the weekend. Still: this was too important to leave to chance. "So, um, I'm doing my road trip this summer."

"Your road trip?" After realizing what he meant, Rachel's eyes went wide. "Oh. Oh, wow. Really?"

Even though it was going to be a bigger pain than he could ever imagine, Artie was going to drive his handicap-modified car across nearly the entire width of the United States. End goal: New Meadows, Idaho. Years ago, Kurt had told Artie that his blood could heal anything inside a person's body, and then offered it freely. It was waiting for him whenever he wanted it.

Despite that offer and all that it meant, Artie tried to talk himself out of it in the years that followed. His life was good. He didn't need to walk to feel like a whole person. It wouldn't make him any smarter, any more of a friend, and wouldn't make him do better in class. He didn't need it. He'd graduated high school, gotten into a fantastic film program, and moved to New York. All on his lonesome. He didn't need it.

But when he had a bad day, he had a really bad day.

He'd gotten mugged. He'd wanted to return to his dorm room to shake off the worst of that trauma, only to discover that the elevator was broken and in the middle of its repair. When he rolled into the lounge to wait until it was ready, there wasn't a single good spot for him to sit and watch television. He'd had to ask for someone else to slide a chair out of the way. And then, after all of that, the creepy asshole from down the hall had been in their floor's handicap stall because he liked having the extra space when he jerked off.

_Again._

Artie was a great, smart, talented guy no matter whether he was walking or not. But God fucking damn, did Artie Abrams get tired of living in an exhausting world, sometimes. And that world would be a little less exhausting if he finally took Kurt up on his offer.

Rachel clearly understood why he'd tried to talk himself out of it for all these years. "You are going to be so, so careful. Right? We can all trust you with this?"

Kurt had offered this to Artie without any concern for himself. But if someone heard that he could fix them, or their kid, or the Mafia boss, or the friendly local dictator... Kurt probably wouldn't be able to make that decision any more. He'd be a slave again. Everyone who'd been entrusted with the secret of his blood knew how very, very careful they needed to be.

"It's why I'm driving instead of flying," Artie said, nodding. "And I'm going to buy my gas and pay for hotels with cash. And I'm not posting anything on social media for my whole trip. _And_ I'm not going to say a word until I've been back here for months. There will be zero chance that anyone will know where I've been or why I'm getting better. Even the government couldn't figure it out."

"You've put a lot of thought into this."

"I mean... obviously. I wouldn't do anything else." Artie smiled lopsidedly. "I'll keep him safe, don't worry."

"Please do," Rachel said with a wavering smile.

A month later, school was out and Artie was getting unbelievably sick of the American highway system. Every functioning nerve ached. He didn't dare rock out to distract himself, because a cop in Wyoming had also been at the same rest stop, seen what looked like a strange steering wheel, and thought that Artie wasn't paying enough attention to whatever was happening in that car. When Artie had opened a window to greet the man as he stopped him from pulling toward the onramp, the cop had made a face at Dr. Dre coming through his speakers. Philistine.

His body really, really wanted to rest. There was only an hour more to go, though. He could push for another hour. He was off the huge freeways and was winding into the mountains on some rural highway lined with huge trees and giant boulders, so it wasn't like he had a place to stop, anyway. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

"I hate Idaho," Artie said through clenched teeth. Forget all those U Da Ho jokes he'd come prepared with, just like he'd always promised. This place deserved none of his sparkling humor. 

He'd despised each new state a little more. Returning to Ohio was vaguely annoying. Iowa could eat him, to be quite frank. By Wyoming, he hoped that big Yellowstone volcano would blow even if it took him and half the world with it. "I should have flown," Artie repeated to himself during the last, terrible miles. "Should have flown, should have flown, should have flown." Now he was in a gorgeous, grassy valley with a spectacular lake to his left, lined with distant purple mountains straight out of a patriotic anthem, and all of it could go straight to fucking hell!

"Oh," Artie hollowly said when, at the end of Finn's directions, he pulled onto a long gravel driveway and looked toward the hillside ahead.

Kurt was flying. Not in a plane.

A slow smile grew. Oh. This trip was good, after all.

An approaching figure drew an unmanly yelp out of him, and Burt Hummel (wait, Burt Hudson) looked amused when he tapped on Artie's window. Right. Yeah. He was running a garage on the highway. There was its building, right there. He'd known that. "Artie, right?" Burt asked, and didn't even try to hide his grin.

"Um. That's me."

In his next breath, Burt sobered. "Kurt told me why you're here. Look, I don't mind, and I'm glad for you, but my first priority is always gonna be him. I just want to make sure...."

Sensing the unspoken prompt, Artie laid out the same careful plan he'd shared with Rachel. By the end it was enough and Burt waved him onward to the house with the hope of a fun visit.

It'd be fun, all right. Fun like a Vatican miracle.

"Hey, man!" called Finn as Artie pulled in front of the house at the end of the long, long driveway, and parked near what looked like the most packed-down and stable area of gravel. This was not a place designed for wheelchair accessibility. Of course... that wouldn't matter for much longer. After a long, shivering wave of wonder ran through Artie, he waved back.

"Well, check you out," Artie said as he extracted himself from the car and rolled toward Finn. His old friend was holding a toddler in his arms as he showed her some interesting toy. "You got started early."

"What?" Finn made a face. "Gross, dude, this is my sister. Mom's out running errands."

Artie grinned back. Even with years apart, it was like Finn had never left at all. "Oh. I thought you'd found some sweet mountain honey to disappoint your parents with just before the shotgun wedding. Ruin my fun, why don't you." 

"I'm not seeing anyone," Finn instantly said. "At all."

If Artie had any context for that obvious, panicked lie, he'd probably be able to know what Finn was hiding in about three seconds. He'd apparently found something gossip-worthy even in the ass end of the Rockies. Too bad Artie had a lot else to think about during that trip, or he'd have fun figuring out what sort of secret smooching partner Finn was lying about. "You mind grabbing my bag?" He clicked open the lock on his trunk. "I did not realize how very much this drive would suck."

Finn easily held his sister in one arm and lifted Artie's bag with the other, then gestured him toward the front entry. After a moment of confusion when he saw the broad stairs, Artie noticed a ramp to one side and rolled toward it. It was made from fresh, yellow wood that couldn't have been out in the elements for long. "I made that," Finn boasted.

Artie hesitated before actually rolling his weight up onto the thing.

"And it's a good ramp," Finn added, annoyed.

Well, it got him to the top, at least. "Nice house," Artie said appreciatively as Finn opened the front door and he rolled inside. From what he knew of that family, it was a perfectly relaxed match for three of them. But even for ever-particular Kurt, he could see him living in there and loving it. It wasn't the sleek downtown celebrity loft he'd grown up idolizing, but it was definitely a place that a celebrity would vacation at when they wanted to dodge the paparazzi. "Gah! Huge dog!"

"Hercules is nice," Finn laughed as that monster sniffed Artie and then tried to lick his face.

"Room," Artie insisted. Seriously, that dog was enormous. "Please. Now."

Finn left him with the dog for a minute—traitor—but then returned without his sister, now down for her nap. After hefting Artie's bag again, he gestured him toward a hall, and then toward the door at its end. Artie's temporary home felt more like a full luxury suite than any guest bedroom he'd ever stayed in. Boy, having some secret celebrity sugar daddies sure paid well, even if none of them knew exactly who'd been funding the family's escape from Ohio. It was nice to know that some A-listers were putting their money to good use.

"He probably didn't see you drive up," Finn said as he sprawled on a seat in the guest room, then gestured overhead. Artie rolled to the bed and poked appreciatively at the soft mattress. "As soon as he notices your car parked in front of the house, he'll come in." Finn's smile grew a little more distant. "It's kinda cool that he doesn't notice everything right away, now. He can relax."

Artie smiled, too. His mom had adopted a cat from the Humane Society just before she was scheduled to be put down. (People had wanted her kittens, but not her.) The poor thing was terrified in their house, and every movement and every noise and every shadow on the wall was something new to fear. Even in her own home, Oreo had been stressed and exhausted. A month later, though, she'd realized she was safe. Then, she didn't even look up when Artie yelled at his Xbox.

He knew it was bad to compare Kurt to animals. He tried not to. But it was good to know that he felt safe.

"Really wish I could have come out to visit before this," Artie said, looking around. He could see a beautiful shadowed forest through one window and moved to open the other's blinds. (Seeing that wild forest before him, he felt like Link.) They'd kept up with chats and texts and their video game band, but it wasn't the same. "It's just kind of a production to get anywhere."

"I was wondering about that. Did you do okay with the hotels?"

"Yeah, it was fine." One place had screwed up his reservation for an accessible room and they had to figure out a replacement, but on that side of things the trip had mostly been smooth. "I just forgot how unfun driving gets after a while, especially when you don't have someone with you on a road trip. Let alone driving for several days solid, all in a row." Okay. He didn't want to wait any more to see his old friend. "So... can you wave down Kurt or something?"

Finn laughed. "Hold on."

It turned out that Finn could just call him. The two Hummels had wanted to set up a way for Kurt to see what his safe boundaries were away from the controller, and they'd found a fancy GPS app that was intended for use with search and rescue squads. Kurt always had his phone on him. (And with those ridiculous skinny jeans he favored, he never had to worry about it slipping out of his pocket from a thousand feet up.)

"Hey!" Kurt said with delight a few minutes later as he walked into the guest room with arms extended. After the hug, he asked, "Good trip?"

"I'm glad it's over," Artie admitted. "Good, uh... flight?"

"Yes, it was a good flight," Kurt laughed. "They all are. Don't make that face, it's not weird that I fly."

"It is _so_ weird that you fly, man." They turned toward Finn to settle the argument.

After realizing that he'd been put on the spot, Finn swallowed and looked between them. "I used to think it was cool but weird," he ventured, "and now I think it's cool and normal?"

They could both accept that. With a light hop, Kurt bounded up onto the guest bed. He barely bounced when he landed and Artie remembered something about how light he'd become as his body changed. For whatever reason, that seemed weirder than how his face been tweaked like someone had gone after it with Photoshop. "It is so good to see you!" Since they couldn't hang straight down, his wings spread slightly against the mattress. The longest feathers splayed open.

Artie forced himself to ignore that. "Good to see you guys, too."

Finn asked, "So, do you like film school?"

"I do," Artie instantly said. And he did, he really did. "I do kinda wonder if I should be doing something more, though."

Kurt frowned. His eyes caught the light and sparkled inhumanly. Artie wasn't sure where that fell on the weight vs. face weirdness scale. "How do you mean?"

"Chances are," Artie said, "if I want to make rent, I am going to end up directing a lot of hemorrhoid commercials."

"Charming," Kurt drawled.

"Hey, I'll put in my time in the hemorrhoid trenches before I land my first music video, and then before some studio trusts me with a hundred-million dollar IP based on that extremely flimsy resume." Kurt looked befuddled at that, and so Artie added, "I had to take one of my critical studies classes last semester. I'm a nerdy white dude and we've got privilege."

"Ah."

Artie wanted to have a long, meaningful conversation all about their lives and where they fit in the world. He wanted to hear more about how both of them were doing in their new home, and he wanted to know how comfortable Kurt was about his future. He did. He was a good friend. He was a mature, confident filmmaker in training. There was so much to talk about. But when he opened his mouth again, the words that came out were, "Can we do it now?"

Kurt blinked and exchanged a smile with Finn. "You're sure? You sounded tired."

"I'm not going to be able to think about anything else until it happens," Artie admitted. "Um. Is it gonna hurt? It's fine if it hurts, it's totally fine, I just want to know ahead of time so I can prepare."

That apparently wasn't an answer that Kurt knew, and so he looked back to Finn, who shook his head. "It feels a little weird, but it doesn't hurt. If you've ever rubbed Icy Hot on a sore muscle? It's kind of like that, but inside."

"I'm apparently like a sports cream," Kurt murmured to himself. "News to me."

This was happening. Artie rested his hands on his knees, squeezed them, and exhaled. This was happening. After more than three years spent waiting... and after a lot of years before that... this was happening. "Okay. So. Yeah. I just drink your blood, right?" Artie barely tripped over the bizarre words. He could be a vampire to get this done. Sure. It was incredibly weird and gross, but he could do this. 

Oh holy shit, Kurt was actually pulling out a knife. Artie really was going to have to drink blood.

As Kurt considered his arm, then his hand, Finn walked over and knelt beside Artie. "It'll glow, so don't be surprised by that. And don't worry, it actually tastes good. It won't be hard to swallow."

"Glad to hear it," Artie said tightly. He felt like he was staring over the edge of some enormous cliff.

"Let's go with the classic," Kurt said and pulled his knife deeply through his wrist. He flinched.

Artie flinched more. Light spilled from Kurt's wound in a terrible waterfall, and for the first time in ages he remembered sitting in his room when his mother rushed in and told him to turn on his television. Every broadcast station had a local news bulletin about the injured football players from McKinley and the Angel they'd brutalized and left on the road. It hadn't looked right for Kurt to be that hideously injured and yet still be glowing like some beautiful, Oscar-winning movie effect.

"Artie," Kurt gently prompted, and he realized the shining, bloody wrist had been raised to him.

With a deep, shuddering breath, Artie overcame the wave of nausea from what he was about to do and sealed his lips to Kurt's skin.

A second later, his eyes opened wide and his nausea vanished.

"Told you it tastes good," Finn said and smirked.

Heat poured into him like easing into a bath after a blizzard. Loving, warm memories of home, family, success, and friendship bubbled through Artie's mind like champagne. They came too fast to identify but surrounded him with the sense that he was at peace, now and forever, and there would never again be any need to worry. As his fingers tightened around the arm he held, Artie regained control of himself and began to understand that the flow was slowing, then stopping.

"You probably should have started him off with a little less," Finn said, somewhere way off in the distance. "I bet that was a lot to get hit with all at once."

"You're probably right," Kurt said and retracted his arm. He wiped the now-unbroken skin absently against his jeans, then knelt down. "Artie? How do you feel?"

"I...." Artie swallowed. His hands shook around his wheelchair's handles. "I feel." It was all he could say.

"Did you break his brain?" Finn demanded.

"No." Artie shook his head desperately. With a huge, shaking breath, he gasped out, "I feel them. My legs, I feel them. The nerves are starting to work." The room was getting blurry. He whipped off his glasses and wiped his eyes. "I feel them." It wasn't much, yet, but it was something. It was anything. There was even a vague awareness. That was what the doctors had said would never happen.

Arms encircled him. Artie tried not to cry against Kurt's shoulder and failed spectacularly. "Thank you, thank you." His voice sounded all choked and strange. "It didn't hurt."

"Glad to hear it," Kurt whispered and let him cry.

It took Artie a while to collect himself and the other boys gave him that time respectfully. Kurt's shirt was soaked at the shoulder when Artie leaned back. Finn had retreated to a corner to watch them with a soft smile. "So," Finn asked once Artie looked coherent again. "You can walk? That's awesome! Show us?"

Laughing, and then wiping away more tears, Artie shook his head again. He'd already tried flexing his legs and had gotten the response he'd expected. Kurt didn't look surprised at his denial, either. "I haven't used my legs in years, Finn. The muscles are still there, but not in good shape. I'm going to need therapy to get them working again." Atrophied muscles wouldn't do him any good yet, but with nerves firing like they should, he could start to strengthen them. It'd be a long road, but now its roadblock was gone.

"Hey, you were supposed to fix everything," Finn said to Kurt. Apparently, in this house, world-class miracles could be insufficiently impressive.

"He did. You so did." Not only had Artie expected this next step, but therapy had actually been part of his coverup plan. "Finn, stop giving him that look. This is actually going to work really well, all right? I won't mention any sensation until I've been back for a while, and then I'll need a while in PT to really start walking. It's going to make everything impossible to tie back to me coming here. Trust me. This is perfect."

Out of all the changes that he could have possibly considered, all Artie could think about was his dorm bathroom. In not all that long, he wouldn't give a crap if that creep from down the hall was jacking off again.

He didn't share that realization with the brothers. They wouldn't understand how amazing that one stupid change could be.

He was going to find all of those stupid changes, now. He was going to stop discovering—to his dismay—all the ways in which it was possible to forget him.

Okay. He needed to stop thinking about this. What had happened was too huge and too new, and it was like his eyes had yet to adjust to the summer sun after walking out of a dark house. All of this was overwhelming. Unfortunately, only one distracting topic came to mind. "It is really weird," Artie said to Finn, "how good he tastes."

Out of all the reactions he'd expected, Finn blushing was was not one of them.

"You told him that my blood would taste good," Kurt reminded Finn in a steady, careful voice.

"Oh. Right, yeah. His blood tastes great." Finn gestured toward Kurt, and then in a bigger arc that was probably aimed at the wings. "And you know that, now."

...Right. Living isolated in the Rocky Mountains was destroying Finn's brain, and it wasn't like he had a lot of leeway. "I should probably turn in," Artie said. He really was tired from the drive, despite how his deep muscle aches had vanished, and sleeping would help his emotions settle. "I'm on Eastern Time and road trip exhaustion."

"Good plan," Kurt said and gestured Finn toward the door. 

"Yeah, you need to be all rested up for your big visit of... uh...." Finn frowned. "I'm actually not sure what you'd like to do around here." Right, they were living in a tiny little town without the basics of modern amenities, and Artie was still halfway convinced that they spent their days roping horses and skinning wolverines. At least they'd been able to get broadband installed; the thought of going without it was too terrible to comprehend.

Artie shrugged. "I was thinking video games and movies."

Finn cocked a finger gun at him. "Sounds like a plan."

* * *

"What did you mean about feeling like you should do something more?" Kurt asked the next day as Finn frowned at the television in the guest room. He'd brought down his game system, since it was still impossible for Artie to climb stairs, but he'd forgotten that meant that he'd have to get all the cables hooked up properly again.

Artie looked away and left Finn to his frustration. His eyes felt exposed without lenses in front of them. He'd instinctively put his glasses back on after the session with Kurt's blood, only to realize that his tears hadn't been the only thing to make them look blurry. Corrected vision didn't need glasses. "Huh? Oh. Right. A lot of you guys are trying to change the world, and I'm making movies. Or. Commercials. Hopefully." He'd heard some vague plans about Kurt wanting to help other people like him once the laws changed. Even if he knew few specifics of that plan yet, it was still big and important.

"Movies can change the world," Kurt said, shrugging. He caught Finn's eye, grinned, and continued, "I mean, all of you were apparently inspired by Ocean's Eleven to try to rescue me after I got taken." Ocean's Eleven was apparently a private joke, because the two of them looked way too amused about an admittedly snappy heist flick. 

"And," Kurt continued when Finn had hooked up all the cords, only to discover that the picture was in black and white, "you could always make a lot of money and give it to me." At Artie's amusement, he clarified, "To help with my refuge plan. I like that idea. Go be the next Spielberg or Lucas, and then write me a huge check."

Or, maybe Artie would shoot for something that was a little more likely than Hollywood's equivalent of winning the lottery. There wasn't much room for more Spielbergs and Lucases. Seeing that Finn had finally got the system working, he texted Puck to get online and then settled in for their latest session. "Mike's got a family thing, so it's just the four of us today." 

That made it easier to do whatever they wanted; people could shift between instruments more easily with the flexibility of an AI bandmate. It also gave Artie less competition when he insisted upon taking vocals for the first song. Rapid-fire, Artie spat the opening lines to Can't Hold Us and fell into his most Macklemore-y of grooves. At every break in the demanding pace, he squeezed his thigh where the hand not holding his microphone rested upon it.

He felt it.

It was hard to finish the song without failing.

"Me next, me next," Kurt demanded and grabbed for the microphone. "I've been wanting to do this one when one of you showed up in person."

That snapped Artie out of his wondrous haze, and he obligingly handed the microphone over to the man who'd changed his life. "Why in person?"

As Kurt grinned and selected his new song, Finn squinted at him in confusion. "That is not good for your voice."

"One, thank you so much for your faith in me. Two, just shut up and watch Artie and tell me if he starts laughing."

As the familiar guitar riffs began playing and Artie tried to keep up with the bass he'd now claimed, he wondered what was about to become entertaining about him just because Kurt wanted to sing Edge of Seventeen. He soon got his answer, as it was indeed difficult to keep a straight face after Kurt began singing _Just like the white-winged dove...._

Finn rolled his eyes, and did it again when Kurt got past the few lines that made sense for amusing Artie. He was right: it wasn't a good match for Kurt's voice. But Kurt had been flying when he got there. He was laughing and joking about who he was now. And he'd just put Artie Abrams' life onto a whole new track.

It was a great song.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments being left. It's so exciting to see people still reading the series! I've had so much fun rolling this world around inside my brain (the process of deciding where they would live after Ohio was something else) and it's really, really fun to see people buying into this universe.

The new school year began, full of possibilities and even more homework. Artie decided to wait until at least two weeks into the semester before he scheduled an appointment with his doctor. It'd been easy enough to explain about getting Lasik over the summer, but this would need more of a foundation. At that appointment, he'd explain that he thought he could feel sensation for the first time since the accident. Tests could proceed from there, and then therapy. He'd come back east by early June. Now it was September. There was zero chance anyone could figure out what had happened. 

Maybe he'd wait three weeks, just to be safe.

As he sat in his class and mused on discussions of genre, his thoughts turned to documentaries. Documentaries told the story of people and the places in which they lived. Artie had never been interested in them before, but they'd been tugging more at his mind ever since he returned to New York. He wanted to make a difference in the world. He'd become keenly aware of how people could become invisible even inside their own homes. For some people, it was very dramatic. They lived in glorious penthouses, wore diamonds, and were desired by billions, but everyone called them "it." For others, it was a low-level, everyday invisibility. Doors weren't wide enough for his chair, or sensors didn't recognize his roommate Elden's darker skin.

He might be interested in telling those kind of stories, instead of making the next Star Wars. Writing checks for charity did sound great, but this seemed like more of a sure thing. And he wanted to make sure that he made a difference. Able to feel his own knees again, thanks to Kurt's blood in him... Artie _needed_ to make a difference.

After stopping by the bookstore, Artie's gaze wandered across the bulletin board that always looked somewhat orderly at the start of a semester and became a multi-layered nightmare by its end. A flyer hung for a master's in urban planning over at NYU. With his camera, he could tell stories about the people in cities. He could get people to care about everyone they'd overlooked. And if people were convinced about what should change, he could... fix cities, maybe.

_Huh,_ Artie thought, then filed that away for later. He had a lot of ground to cover with his bachelor's, first.

His gaze moved to another flyer on that board and Artie's considering gaze sharpened. His film program had somehow managed to turn itself into one of the best in the country, despite being at a relatively affordable public university. Its tuition remained low even as competition for the few open spots got ever more intense. It was why he'd tried to focus on school as he became used to the workload; video games with his old friends were one of his few indulgences. 

He was more confident with time management, now. Maybe he did finally want to join that choir headquartered over in the music program.

Someone saw him studying the flyer and smiled. "Thinking about joining?"

The guy kind of dressed like a dork, but Artie supposed he couldn't judge someone for that. "Yeah, I did choir in high school. It was fun. I miss it."

"It really is fun. I joined right when I started. I'm over in the theatre school," he added. 

"Film," Artie added, trying not to sound like he was bragging. Even though the film school had cultivated itself into a national powerhouse, the other programs were perfectly respectable. They didn't have the prestige of the private Manhattan programs like Tisch, NYADA, or Juilliard, but there was a ton of talent within those walls who couldn't quite afford the most expensive schools in the city.

"Impressive," the other boy said, raising his eyebrows.

Artie smiled to himself. Yeah, it was.

The other boy extended his hand. "Blaine Anderson."

Artie shook it. "Artie Abrams, and I will see you in the choir room and promptly knock you out of the first alphabetical spot."

Blaine laughed. "Looking forward to it."

Yeah, so was Artie. He really had missed that connection to a choir, even if he doubted they could recapture that magic of a scrappy little group who wasn't supposed to make it out of their first year alive. _Well, cool,_ Artie thought as he wheeled off. _I'm already meeting new people._

* * *

He'd made the right choice, Blaine decided as he left the theatre building, checked traffic, and jaywalked to the music hall. If he'd still had his original college fund, then one of those posh private schools in Manhattan would probably have been waiting for him. He deeply appreciated the money his mother had set aside from trading into a smaller house, but it wasn't anywhere near as much.

Occasionally he felt wistful about those programs he wasn't attending, but by choosing this public school and being careful with his new funds, he'd only have four figures of debt when he graduated. Working artists weren't exactly known for raking in the money right away—if ever—and it would be reassuring to not have massive student loan payments hanging over him.

Plus, it was in Brooklyn. People complained about Brooklyn hipsters, but it was full of personality and interesting corners to turn. Every lifelong New Yorker he talked to said that Manhattan had been hollowed out. He'd much rather be in Brooklyn. Sure. Yeah.

(His intense pep talk had certainly not been prompted by how the theatre program had decided against the licensing fee for Next to Normal just yet, and was instead going for Jesus Christ Superstar.)

"Artie?" Blaine guessed when he walked toward the familiar choir room and saw that boy in his wheelchair studying the number on its hallway window. He thought that was the name he'd said earlier. "You've got the right place."

Artie turned and smiled at him, then proceeded inside when Blaine held the door. "Cool, thanks. So, what'd you guys get up to last year?"

"We do popular music. Usually a cappella, though sometimes we'll have drums, guitar, or a piano. There is a chamber choir that's kicking off this Wednesday, if you'd prefer that."

"I one million percent do not want to join a chamber choir." 

He seemed certain, so Blaine called over Mr. Emerson and Amanda, the senior captain. "Show us what you can do," their director said. Officially, Artie was supposed to audition through the normal process, but since Blaine had practically recruited the guy he felt responsible for getting him in. Hopefully he could sing.

He could. He was quite good, actually, even if he decided to make his introduction to their group be Maroon 5's Makes Me Wonder (explicit version). 

"Well, great," Mr. Emerson said with raised eyebrows as he made notes on his clipboard. "Artie, you are certainly welcome to join us."

Artie grinned. "Groovy. Thanks." From that tone in his voice, he'd known perfectly well that he was getting a nod to join. A lot of people outside their college thought that someone who was aware of their own talent was cocky, but Blaine preferred "confidence" and respected it when he saw it.

"He's been hiding over in the film school, or we probably would have found him by now," Blaine added. 

"Too bad, I hoped you were a new freshman. Both of you two should be taking my music classes instead of studying that other stuff," Mr. Emerson said wistfully. He seemed to simultaneously treat his choir as a way to form connections between all the creative programs and as a recruitment tool for dedicated music majors.

The rest of the choir session went smoothly, and was mostly dedicated to measuring the newcomers' ranges and deciding what sort of song genres might fit neatly into the pocket of this year's vocal composition. Mr. Emerson kept mumbling about late-'90s Orlando-based pop, which was so thrilling that Blaine didn't want to let himself get his hopes up if he'd misheard him.

When the choir session ended, Blaine found himself naturally walking toward the exit with Artie. It wasn't like they'd shared a huge moment back there in the hallway, but it was at least a connection. Connections could make friendships, and Blaine always liked to make more friends. "So, where are you from?" Few people there had actually come from New York.

"Oh." Artie waved that off. "Boring little town in Ohio."

"Seriously?" Blaine laughed. A connection, indeed. "Me too. No, really. I'm also from Ohio."

"By Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, Cincinnati, or _really_ small?" Artie listed, offering up the biggest cities that a little town might be somewhere near. If it wasn't anywhere near one of those, then arriving in New York City would have been a culture shock beyond belief. Even with the opportunities he'd been granted and the assurance he possessed on stage, the city had still greeted Blaine with a slap to his face and ego. Fall Freshman semester hadn't been fun.

"Pretty close to Columbus." Blaine smacked the walk signal button when they left the building and reached an intersection. 

"No way! I was kind of between Columbus and Toledo. Not that it really mattered, since it was just about what zip code the local cows had." 

Blaine laughed. "Speaking of cows, do you want to grab something to eat?"

"Sure." They both smiled at the other and felt friendship take root. On the way they talked about how they'd ended up in Brooklyn. Artie's application process was expectedly rigorous, but everyone knew how intense the film school was. In return, Blaine showed his audition videos for the musical theatre program.

"Wow, nice," Artie said with clear appreciation of his chosen performances. "You didn't want to go to some of the bigger names?"

Blaine rubbed the back of his neck. He could still remember the look on his parents' faces when they'd learned that he'd sold their very, very expensive present for literal pocket change. "I managed to get my parents pretty upset at me over some, ah, money issues. Cheaper tuition was better."

"Wild man wrecking the Cadillac on the way to golf practice," Artie decided. Blaine let him.

Chinese takeout was always a safe bet, and its boxes were well-sized for dorm fridges. Blaine carried their orders to where Artie had found a convenient concrete planter and sat on its edge. Artie was in his own chair, of course. "You said you did choir in high school?" he asked after eating a few mouthfuls of orange chicken.

"Yeah, we competed and everything. It was pretty intense." Artie hesitated, then grinned. "Wait. Our schools were close to each other. Maybe we beat you guys down a few times?"

"I doubt it," Blaine said with a smirk. "The Warblers were very good."

Artie crowed with delight and lifted his hands to the air. "We did! My junior year, we beat you! This is like some awesome teen movie where the scrappy underdogs get to lord their success over the rich kids for life. I am living in a John Hughes movie. Actually, no, wait. It's a Hilary Duff movie. I can live with that."

"You beat us?" Blaine repeated, befuddled, as he tried to remember who'd taken the regionals crown that year. Who was a 'scrappy' choir? They seemed to be in the same year, so it would have been his junior year as well. "Oh! The sex joke name. I cannot believe they let you get away with calling your choir that."

Artie cackled. "Would you believe that our director never figured out that we sounded like 'Nude Erections?' Ever. That man was amazingly dense." With a triumphant swipe of his chopsticks, Artie placed another strip of Mongolian beef into his mouth, chewed, and announced, "But yes, you are looking at Lima's finest, now and forever."

Blaine dropped his chopsticks.

"Oops," Artie laughed, looking at the dirty sidewalk. "Guess you're done for now."

With tingling hands, Blaine rigidly folded the top of his takeout box back together. It was a good distraction until his voice sounded natural again. "Oops," he agreed with forced humor. "I suppose this was a sign. I was putting off homework. See you at next practice?"

With a bright, unconcerned smile, Artie also folded his box closed, tucked it in his backpack, and rolled off. Blaine must have covered his nerves well. If Artie had any clue what had just surged through Blaine's mind, he never would have looked so cheerful as he left.

Lima. Artie was from Lima, and was about his age. Artie had been in a choir. 

Though his heart raced, Blaine forced himself to wait until he'd returned to his dorm room before sending a friend request to Artie's Facebook. It was accepted almost immediately and Artie's privacy-locked profile opened to him. Careful like he'd never been to avoid accidentally liking a post, Blaine clicked into Artie's photo galleries and began scrolling back through the years.

So. That was what he'd looked like without the wings. Kurt seemed so much younger in these pictures. Whether it was the physical changes or the shock of being captured, he'd looked notably older by the time Blaine met him. He looked so... innocent. He had been so innocent. Then the hunters found him. Then Blaine made him decide between giving up his name or his personhood. And then....

He felt like an addict falling off the wagon as he looked for anyone in Artie's friends list who also came from McKinley. He thought it likely that Mercedes Jones had been Kurt's closest friend back then. Her gallery was filled with silly candid photos of them. Kurt had looked _so_ different, Blaine marveled as he clicked back years into the past. 

Mike Chang seemed like a bust, at first; his Facebook wasn't all that active and he tended toward posting motivational quotes rather than selfies. However, with that skimpy gallery, it was easy to look between the few actual photos and find a man he remembered from a trip to a lonely garage. Mike had performed at the 'Hummel and Hudson wedding.' Kurt's father had married someone? After Blaine sold him back?

Hudson. Who was named Hudson? There had to be someone commenting on Mike's wall with the last name Hudson. Finn was easy enough to find once he went looking, and Blaine clicked to his profile only to discover that it had been locked down. He could see the profile picture of the smiling boy, but nothing more about who he was. All he knew for sure was that it was probably a recent photo, since Finn looked to be past high school. With a quick Google search of the original New Directions roster, Blaine verified that he was in the same school year as Kurt.

When he'd stopped by the garage after that terrible news story, the employee there had told Blaine that Burt had moved. Finn had certainly gone with him, since his mother had just married Kurt's father and he wouldn't yet have graduated. _Where are you?_ Blaine wondered as he studied the profile picture of that stranger. It looked like he was somewhere in the mountains. In new tabs, Blaine brought up Google Images and compared the foliage of Ohio's Appalachians with the Adirondacks, with the Smokies, with the Rockies, with the Sierras, with the Cascades. Going by the dry pines behind him and the particular quality of the light, Finn was out west. It could be any of the last three ranges.

His shirt was blue and orange, but the logo was hidden behind the fish he was proudly holding. Blaine searched for 'blue and orange sports team' and started reading through the list. It was easy to ignore teams like the New York Mets or Knicks, or the Chicago Bears. It could be a college team, he allowed, and ignored Auburn, Florida, Illinois, and Syracuse just as quickly. None of those were anywhere near western mountains. But both Broncos were blue and orange, whether they were NFL players in Colorado or college players in Idaho.

"What the hell am I doing?" Blaine suddenly whispered to himself.

He'd burned that feather for a reason. The best thing he could do in Kurt's life now was to stay out of it. Instead, with one hell of a surprise but no other prompting, he'd hunted the slave he'd once owned until he was positive that he'd tracked him to one of two states. _No,_ he tried to tell himself. _You don't know that._ It wasn't like you could only wear a team's shirt if you were local. There weren't many NFL teams anywhere near the Denver Broncos. Finn could be holding up that fish in Montana or Utah or New Mexico or Nevada, and it'd be just as likely to see a blue and orange shirt on him there.

Well. That just meant that he need more information.

Shoving aside his horror at himself with a giddy, sick thrill, Blaine started looking at other people's profiles. Rachel Berry didn't use Facebook that much, but she mentioned an Instagram that she wanted all of her friends to follow. He recognized some of the names in the comments there, suspected who others must be, and started visiting all of their accounts. Since he wasn't logged in to Instagram with his web browser, it was safer to check old pictures than it had been on Facebook. He couldn't accidentally like a years-old post and alert someone. The speed of his clicking sped.

By the end, adrenaline pumped through him as he looked at one post that made no mention of anything obviously important. Mercedes had accidentally put a geotag on a picture of herself gesturing toward familiar-looking pine trees and dry, spotty grass, with a caption proclaiming her hatred of nature.

He knew exactly where Kurt was.

Trembling with the tension of all his work, Blaine looked up and blinked in shock at the time. He'd been doing this for almost two hours. One name had just led to another. A mention of a trip sent him back to the first person's profile to see if they'd posted any shot that was more revealing with fresh context. After a thousand tiny steps, Blaine had all the evidence he needed to be positive that he had tracked down the boy he'd saved from slavery.

What would Kurt do if Blaine contacted him again?

He'd be totally changed by now, Blaine thought as he forced back what dizziness he could. He'd look... he'd look _intoxicating._ He'd be happy and healed, and by now he would have had so many successful, spectacular flights through the clouds. He'd probably be grateful.

Blaine went back to Google Maps. In that tiny, nowhere town, he searched to see if there were any garages. There was one, with three five-star reviews under its business listing. One of them mentioned the owner: Mr. Hudson.

He had a street address.

_I know where to write Burt Hummel,_ Blaine thought with a slow, amazed smile. _He could pass it on to Kurt._

Kurt had to be so, so grateful. And by now he'd be even more beautiful.

"I... I have homework," Blaine told himself, and forced himself not to think about this any longer. Not right now. He needed to come up with the right plan, and it would not be easy at all to write the perfect letter. Obviously, visiting was out of the question. At least, not until the next summer. He wasn't used to driving on hills in the ice and snow, let alone through mountains.

As he studied the ceiling before falling asleep, Blaine's mind still buzzed. Nothing in his life seemed to exist beyond that address he'd found for a garage. Kurt had to live within a mile of it, right? None of his memories mattered except that morning when he'd been the world's biggest hero for Kurt Hummel. 

_He'd be so happy to see me,_ Blaine convinced himself as he drifted away into pleasant dreams.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting this and replying to comments! I have been busy keeping track of family in Texas. (They're fine!) 
> 
> This story is a long-term look at what Blaine does post-Weight of the World, so I think I may be resolving some certain things faster than people were speculating. :) However, there's more to come! This theme of this series really does seem to be "it sure is easy for people to do terrible things, but eventually they get better."
> 
> 3-4 chapters will probably follow this one, though I'm not yet positive how the number will be divvied up.

He'd moved on. He really had. He'd been responsible and had let go. Years ago he'd done absolutely every responsible thing he was supposed to do. He had moved on emotionally, mentally, and symbolically. Angel ownership had been a very short period in his life and he'd ended it willingly. Now he recognized the truth of his actions during it. By now, he was a different man than the pretentious boy he'd been while his parents were married in a beautiful but cold house.

But this just had to be a sign. For an old friend of Kurt's to show up and join Blaine's choir, in a new city and new state, and to open all those old, very human photo galleries to him... it had to mean something. It simply had to.

Blaine had no idea what to do with this new information, though, and so he shoved it away until he could figure out some approach that made even vague sense. For now, he needed to stop thinking about the controller he'd once been given, stop thinking about Angels at all, and do his assigned readings. And after he finished this first reading, he would reward himself with a little social media break. Just like normal. His world desperately needed to return to normal.

He'd set up his Twitter account to keep up with friends, the news, and a few favorite actors and musicians. And then, sure, he'd added on some gossip accounts. Most of the time he received updates on Ellen and Portia's latest real estate endeavors, a new pizza success story that had something to do with LeBron, or the latest couple to split up after someone famous cheated on someone else famous.

Tweets about Angels were very rare. Restrictions were tight on photographing them without permission and so celebrities were usually only seen with theirs at awards shows when they wanted to show them off. Blaine really hadn't been prepared for Ryan Seacrest to post a sudden selfie with his dog and Angel, saying he was taking them both for a walk on a gorgeous afternoon.

Seacrest's Angel was beautiful. Of course. It was impossible for them to be anything but beautiful. She had rich tan skin like she'd spent all summer on the beach, warm honey hair that gleamed under the sun, and deep jade eyes. She didn't often show up for red carpet events—Seacrest left her off-camera, not wanting to show up the celebrities he interviewed—but when she did, her blue parrot wings were spectacular.

Those brilliant, sparkling eyes had as much awareness behind them as did Seacrest's dog.

It was obvious at a glance that she was completely hollow. There was no personality left beyond a desire to keep her owner happy. Her needs wouldn't just be secondary to his, they'd be irrelevant. Whoever she'd once been, the cartel had completely shattered everything that once made her... _her._

The thought of Kurt looking at the world with that blank, compliant expression nauseated him. It was so good to remember how easily he'd recalled the favorite lullaby his mother had once sung. He'd remembered everything. He'd gotten out of the training center's claws and into a much safer place long before they managed to break him. By now, all the effects of the scant conditioning he'd undergone had to be erased. He'd be that same boy that Blaine had seen buried in his old friends' photo galleries, and he knew that boy's address.

This was an unprecedented opportunity and Blaine couldn't do anything to screw up this chance he'd miraculously been given. Until he figured out that perfect approach, everything he'd learned during his social media hunt was forced down as deep as he could shove it. He had quizzes to worry about, and eventually exams. He had practices to attend for their department show and songs to learn for choir. He had friendships to maintain, a mother to call, a room to keep clean, laundry to do.... 

Weeks passed as the last summer heat gave up with an abrupt shift into autumn. Blaine never controlled his mind more totally than when he was around Artie, and so got quite good at thinking only about his current life in New York when the other boy was near. Artie recommended a new movie, and in return, Blaine suggested a local musician he'd seen once before. They enjoyed the other's choice of entertainment and began thinking of more options. They talked about the film and theatre schools, respectively. They tilled the ground for a deep, real friendship, and so long as Blaine kept his mind on appropriate ground, the friendship did feel real and unremarkable.

During those weeks, the only Angel indulgence Blaine gave himself was watching a webcam that overlooked a resort town close to the address he'd found. When an early season storm rolled through and dusted the town overnight, the snow looked more powdery than what they got back east. He hoped Kurt didn't get chilly when it snowed. Blaine hadn't gotten the chance to see how he did with winter and wondered if he shivered when the wings got cold. He hoped not; they'd been so warm under his hands. With Kurt's pale skin and wings, winter and spring would be his most flattering seasons. 

Because Blaine didn't let himself actively think about everything he'd found out, he had no idea what to do next. He didn't even know what he hoped would happen when he did take some vague 'next step.' He needed to know that Kurt had recovered from the abduction that had been on the news, of course. He hoped to know that he'd fully returned to a whole, healthy personality within the walls of his own family home. He was curious about the new town they'd moved to and hoped it was safer than Ohio had been.

All of those sounded like small, reasonable requests. There were bigger dreams, too, and he let himself muse on those even less. Kurt would be happy to hear from him and be so grateful for what he'd done. He'd hear how remarkable his actions had been. Blaine would be a returning hero, who'd once swooped in to save the day and had now reappeared from the mists.

Those bigger, sillier dreams weren't really serious. They were distractions that edged around his thoughts right before sleep or bubbled up during boring classes. He wasn't going to end up in a three-bedroom condo overlooking Central Park, either, but it was fun to imagine.

After another few days of not acknowledging his daydreams outside of the few distracted moments when they took him over, Blaine gave in and returned to browsing old photo galleries. He didn't save the photos to his own hard drive, though. That would be too much.

He wished he could see more of Finn's posts. It'd be good to know if that new family member was trustworthy or not.

* * *

"So," Artie said with a grin before another week's choir practice. He directed his words to Mr. Emerson and Amanda, but Blaine was also nearby to hear him. "I have some pretty great news. But it might make it a little harder for the choir. Sorry, but not too sorry."

Mr. Emerson closed his notes. "What's up?"

"I went to the doctor yesterday." Oh, right; Artie had been twitchy recently, and had mentioned a medical appointment. He hadn't seemed worried about whatever would be discussed at that appointment, though, and so Blaine hadn't fretted either. "It looks like my nerves are finally healing. Or re-routing. Or whatever they needed to do to let my brain talk to them."

Amanda was the first to clue in. "Holy shit, are you going to be able to walk again?"

As Artie grinned and nodded, amazement filled Blaine. "Really? That's... wow!"

"Pretty damn wow," Artie agreed. "It's not going to be for a while. I'll have to start seeing a physical therapist. Chances are, it's going to be a long time until my muscles are a-ok again. I have exercises I'll need to do, and...." He waved it off. "Anyway, I might be going back and forth between my chair and crutches. It'll be ups and downs."

Clueing in that Artie had referred to that back-and-forth with his mention of 'harder for the choir,' Mr. Emerson shook his head, laughed, and clapped Artie on the shoulder. "Do not worry about that for one second." Indeed, a time like this wasn't when they needed to start worrying about optimal riser arrangements. "And if you need to miss practices for any sessions with your doctor, just let us know."

Artie was clearly trying to be mature and responsible about all of this, but he couldn't stop grinning. "Thanks. I shouldn't need to."

It was almost impossible to think about the notes he needed to hit that afternoon. Blaine kept looking down at Artie and feeling himself swell with joy for his new friend. He'd never asked whether it was congenital, illness, or an accident; it'd be intrusive and rude, and really, it was irrelevant. And after meeting a Deaf boy at Dalton, and learning about the differences in his worldview that made him capitalize that label, he wouldn't have assumed that Artie necessarily wanted to get rid of his chair. But now it was obvious to see that he did, and so he was beyond happy for him.

They went to grab dinner again—Italian, this time—and Blaine offered to pay. It was a celebration, after all.

"It's going to be rough," Artie admitted. "All that's changed so far is that my nerves are listening to my brain again. I have to do these daily massages to improve blood flow. Eventually I'll start working through like ten different levels of resistance exercises for different muscle groups, and...."

There really was a lot he still faced, Blaine realized as the particulars of physical therapy began to overwhelm him. Artie hadn't even gone to the therapist's office for a formal plan, yet; this was all just from his regular doctor. The plans all made sense to Artie, obviously, but Blaine hadn't realized how much Artie had to think about just existing from day to day. He really had been oblivious to a lot of things.

"Good luck with everything," Blaine said as they turned to head their separate ways. When Artie mentioned his roommate, he was again glad that the housing lottery had given him a spot in one of the suites with four tiny solo bedrooms rather than a shared double dorm. It would have been very difficult to explain some of his web search habits this semester to a nosy roommate. "I hope it's a smooth and quick process."

"Best thing you could wish for, honestly." Artie still smiled, but he was admirably composed after hearing such amazing news just the day before. "Talk to you tomorrow."

It really was incredible, Blaine thought toward his phone as he liked Artie's Facebook post announcing the big news. Many people had liked it already and his click disappeared into that huge pile of names. From the sounds of some of the comments being left, this really had been seen as an absolute impossibility. Relatives simply couldn't believe it. His aunt wanted to fly out. On the medical miracle scale, this all sounded like just a step or two below coming back from the dead.

Blaine suddenly felt very, very cold, and his feet stilled on the sidewalk.

As he raised his phone again and scrolled further down Artie's wall, the thoughts he'd forced into his subconscious over the past few weeks burst free like an opened fire hydrant. The two things probably had nothing to do with each other. Just because Artie was undergoing a medical impossibility and he was old friends with someone who could come back from the dead... who'd certainly resurrected on that snowy highway just before the news cameras turned on... who _had_ come back from the dead right in front of Blaine....

Artie posted regularly, but there was nearly a three-week span in early summer when he'd completely vanished off the social media radar.

Before he could think about whether this was a good idea, Blaine turned and ran down the sidewalk. His feet pounded and his messenger bag thumped heavily against him with each step.

He caught up with Artie just before he reached his dormitory's front door. "Wait," Blaine said desperately. He'd been there, just a few short months ago. He'd seen him. He'd know that he was healthy and happy again. In person. He'd seen him.

Artie blinked at him, surprised. "You okay? What's up?"

All of this had to be a sign. Coincidences like this didn't just happen. With one dramatic gesture in a family-owned garage, Blaine had repented for all he'd done wrong. Now, the fates had aligned to offer the chance for something better to develop out of that. For him to learn so much about the fiercely strong, opinionated, beautiful boy he'd once known couldn't be an accident. His skin tingled like it had become too small for his body. His mouth moved like someone else had control of it. "Is he okay, now?"

Confused, Artie shook his head.

"When you went to Idaho this summer, was Kurt okay?"

Artie went sickly, greyish white and said nothing.

"Please, please, I just want to know if he's all right. The last time I saw him was on the news and... and...." He'd abandoned him to such a terrible fate.

"How did you know," Artie said in slow, deliberate tones, "where I was?"

"He healed you, didn't he? I didn't know they could do that, just that they can heal themselves, but—"

"Tell me how the fuck you know this," Artie snapped. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. He looked ready to vomit. His mouth worked like there was too much saliva in it.

How did he know this? Everything was moving too fast and too slow at the same time. The world felt like it was spinning around Blaine, and he had to blink a few times before he remembered how to form words. "All of you, all of his old friends... you visited him. I saw it. Mercedes posted the town's name, Burt's new garage is on Google...."

Artie's eyes filled with tears. His anger slid into sudden fear. "What do you want? What do you need to not say this to anyone? Oh shit. Fuck, fuck. I promised. I promised Rachel I'd keep him safe, I promised, I _promised...."_

"That's just what I want, too," Blaine said. He couldn't figure out why Artie was so terrified. They were on the same side. He took a step forward; Artie rolled backward in a sharp jerk. "He's been through so much and I just want to know that he's all right, now. Please. I saw that his father got married? That's good. After his mother died, a big new family would probably make him happy. Do he and Finn get along well?"

The first tear ran down Artie's cheek. "How do you know this?" he asked in a tiny, frightened voice. 

"I still care about him," was the only explanation that came to mind. His body was too out of control to hold it inside.

A sudden light bloomed in Artie's eyes and he instinctively rolled backward again. Blaine stepped forward, and then a second time, anticipating that Artie would have continued running. But he hadn't. After that first movement Artie held his ground and a sudden fire filled his eyes. "You lived close to Lima. You said you wasted your parents' money."

Well, then. Artie could put pieces together, too. As a sudden calm settled over him, Blaine slowly nodded. He had no idea what he'd say when asked to explain why he'd never checked on Kurt after driving off and leaving him with his father, but surely something would come.

"You worthless piece of rapist shit."

His skin abruptly felt too tight again. "What?" Blaine croaked.

Artie's eyes burned like hot coals. "Were you excited when you got my friend for a present? Did you have fun thinking of all the things you'd make him do?" He leaned forward. "Did you call him 'it?' Bet you did."

His jaw hung open, useless. Yes. He had. Back then. At first. Only at first. Not by the end, when he'd saved him.

"And after you fucking ra—" Artie took a deep breath, set his jaw, and tried again. "Raped my friend and tortured him with that collar, you come back years later and start stalking him?"

"What?" Tears prickled in Blaine's eyes. "No. No, that's not what happened." It... yes, it was exactly what had happened back in his father's house, but it wasn't what was going on _now._ This was supposed to be a miracle, not whatever this conversation had twisted into. The sidewalk felt unsteady under his feet. Artie knew Kurt, he'd known him for years. They probably talked all the time. Artie couldn't leave this conversation thinking all of this about Blaine. 

"This is why you grabbed me for your choir, isn't it?" Artie spat. "To get into my Facebook?"

"What?" Why was this happening? "No! I... no! I had no idea who you were! And I... I saved him. I sold him back to his father," Blaine desperately pointed out. It was nothing that anyone else in the world would have done with an Angel they'd been given.

"You sold him," Artie repeated with disgust. Said like that, the words echoed in Blaine's ears.

Angels got sold like any other possession. If you first saw an Angel when you looked at someone, then of course you'd do whatever you wanted to them. They were bought to live up to their new owner's every desire. The entire world did whatever they want, from ordering them into bed to killing them for fun. Someone pulling up out of society's fog to lift an Angel back into the sun was miraculous. Impossible. Unprecedented. Heroic.

But Angels were people, despite what that awful world said. And if you started with a view of one as a kidnapped, innocent person instead of as a possession, the person who tortured and raped them would always be their torturer and rapist. It didn't make someone a hero to stop doing that to their victim. It made them less awful.

One of them had seen Kurt as an Angel, first. The other, as a person.

Blaine had known that he needed to walk away. Years ago he'd accepted it, and had lived up to that decision until an offhand mention of Lima, Ohio made over takeout Chinese food. To let himself fall into things again... it was nearly as selfish as he'd been back then. 

Kurt wouldn't see him as his hero. Ever.

"I'll drop out of choir," Blaine mumbled after a long, quiet pause as reality sunk in around him, grey and cold. "I assume you won't want to see me ever again, and it wouldn't be fair to make you leave because of me."

Artie said nothing.

"And... of course I won't say anything about him. Anything. I just...." Tears filled his eyes. Since he didn't look up, one fell and spattered on the sidewalk. "The last time I saw him was on the news. Please tell me that he was doing better than that night." Artie still said nothing and that silence was like a hot knife twisting inside him. "I saw how badly they hurt him."

"Yeah. You'd know all about that."

Blaine flinched. He just wanted to know if he was all right, now. He never had to see Kurt again, never had to see him fly, never had to see a huge, healthy smile directed only at him... but he just wanted to know that he was all right. He had to know that taking him back home had been more of a blessing than a curse. Ever since that news bulletin, the scab over those memories had ripped into a gaping wound. When he didn't prod that wound he could ignore it, but ever since meeting Artie....

No assurance came and he took a step back. No. Artie didn't owe him that. "I won't say anything." He'd known what he was doing was wrong. It had been stupid and impulsive, he'd talked himself into believing that it was justified, and it was absolutely wrong.

"Stay in choir," Artie said after a long, silent stretch of studying him. "I've got other things to worry about."

Blaine didn't stop Artie from passing him, and said nothing as he let himself into his dormitory. Another fat, hot tear splattered against the sidewalk.

It seemed like there should be something he could do to assure Artie that his intentions were pure. Of course he wouldn't tell anyone where Artie had gone, and of _course_ he wouldn't share the realization that Kurt could heal him. God, if something like that got out, Kurt would be in eternal danger from a greedy world. It'd be far more dangerous for him than just the golden collar. He should be able to convince Artie of that somehow. There had to be some way to get Artie to listen.

"What am I doing?" Blaine softly said to himself in a repeat of his mad, adrenaline-fueled dash through New Directions' social media accounts.

This whole time, he'd known what he was doing. He just didn't want to admit it. He'd stopped seeking absolution and started seeking adulation. It wasn't about making Kurt's life better, but his own. He'd thought he'd cut away all emotions back on that day that he set fire to the feather, but just like Kurt had come back to life in front of him, so had all of this.

Those renewed hopes didn't matter. Everyone else wasn't a character in his redemption story. He'd done one thing right in that garage, but it came after he'd done so much wrong. "Strike two," he morosely whispered to himself as he thought about the intrusive, inappropriate, and frankly terrifying behavior he'd pulled that semester. God. No wonder Artie had been ready to burst into tears. He cared about his friend, and Blaine would have looked like the biggest threat imaginable to him as he came in with that knowledge out of nowhere.

He'd bookmarked a lot of social media profiles that he had no right to follow.

It wasn't as symbolically appropriate as burning a feather, but Blaine forced himself to delete those links.

He still had a lot of growing up to do.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not supposed to need this much air conditioning in Oregon. :(
> 
> Anyway, on to the future! I'll see how quickly I can get the next chapter out, because my brain just doesn't want to function in the middle of a heat wave and it doesn't look like it's leaving soon.

That night changed him in a way a silent promise with a burnt feather never truly had.

As the semesters rolled by, Blaine wanted to be on stage less and less. He only stayed in choir for a distraction, and in there learned there that so many music majors dreamed of making it big. Huge. Supernova stardom. In their dreams, their voices made them fabulously rich. When Blaine went back to his stage performance classes, his classmates dreamed of originating a role in the next Les Mis or Rent or Wicked. They all wanted to be on television when they received their Tony. For some of them, their ultimate fantasies meant becoming wealthy enough to buy their very own adoring sex slave.

If Kurt had been fully trained... if he'd been as hollow as Seacrest's smiling Angel when he was sold... Blaine would still have a slave of his own right now. He never, ever would have given _it_ up and never would have questioned whether there was anything wrong with what he was doing. On that very day, he'd be lording his plaything over his fancy, posh Manhattan school and using it to impress casting directors when he walked in for auditions.

His own classmates now disgusted him, because he disgusted himself.

In the important summer before his senior year, he applied for production internships instead of auditioning for roles that would get his name out in public. He still loved the theatre and always would, but he just couldn't spend all his days talking to people who aspired to something so desperately wrong. It made sense to go for offstage work, by that point; he'd been leaning more and more on production electives as upperclassman flexibility opened up his schedule. The production students didn't act like the performers did.

One of those applications worked out. Being a Broadway gofer was perfectly respectable for a student, especially if it meant participating in a little bit of Broadway history as part of his summer internship. As he went to work in the Majestic Theatre, home to The Phantom of the Opera since before his birth, they kept breaking their own daily record for longest-running production. (Perhaps he shouldn't have been disappointed by his program choosing a Webber play, after all.)

Most of the time he sorted mail, checked actors in prior to their daily performances, and helped verify that all wardrobe pieces and props had been returned after those shows. It wasn't what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, and he doubted this would even pay the bills if it was done as a real job instead of an internship, but he liked being there during his student years. Sometimes they all went out for drinks after a show, actors and stagehands alike, and that was fun. A few times, the producers even came.

"Sounds like they've got you doing pretty much everything," said Craig, one of those producers, during a night out late in the summer. "This is about the time I check to see which interns have shown up every day."

"The show must go on," Blaine said gamely and sipped his rum and coke. (After his twenty-first birthday, he was still deciding on what drinks he liked best. This had not been the right order.)

"Exactly. You need people who you can count on to be down in the trenches every single day. Imagine if someone comes to the city and Phantom just... isn't running, even though they had tickets." This had the feeling of something good about to happen, and so Blaine kept his mouth shut so that he wouldn't ruin whatever Craig was about to say. Sure enough, the man continued. "Interested in doing more with production? I'd be keen on seeing what you do with things past checklists and mail sorting."

"That'd be amazing," Blaine said, grinning.

It was tricky to juggle his senior year with his new part-time job, but he was there every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday just like he'd promised. He even missed Thanksgiving, much to his mother's disbelief, and spent nearly all of Sunday on the phone with her to make up for it. It was worth the effort. He was learning things he could never get from his classes, and meeting everyone in that city who ran every show he loved. 

To give himself more free time in that hectic senior year, he did quit choir. Artie had never come back to the choir room after their confrontation. Blaine had never gone looking for his short-term friend, nor tried to explain himself again. Recalling Artie's fear over what he might do next, Blaine tried to be very transparent about where he was at all times on every social media account he had. If Artie did check in on him to make sure that he wasn't a lingering threat, he'd always be safely occupied in Manhattan or Brooklyn.

Once, he did look at Artie's Facebook to verify what he'd known would happen: he'd been removed as a friend and could no longer see Artie's privacy-locked profile. However, he still did see something he'd hoped for. The banner photo across the top of the profile was Artie walking through Central Park with some friends. 

On another day, recalling a stray geotag, he checked the Instagram account for that stranger named Mercedes. He didn't want to see anything about Kurt, he honestly didn't, but he just hoped that she was being more careful about what she posted. To his surprise, her account was private when he visited. Hesitating, Blaine then put in the work to track down all the other accounts he'd once found. Every single one of them had been locked down. He nodded slowly. He was sure Artie had told them to do that.

Blaine graduated. His mother and father both showed up to the ceremony and did not sit together. His father was proud of him for going into the production side of things; it was more practical. His mother hoped that he wasn't doing that to be more money-obsessed like his father. He ended up eating a congratulatory lunch twice, so that he could take each of them to a different restaurant without the other.

By that point Craig was developing a new off-Broadway play, and asked Blaine to join the production team rather than spending more years spinning his wheels on the well-established Phantom. Three years later, the play had sprouted, matured, ripened, and closed after an eleven month run that just made back its production costs. It wasn't the spectacular success they'd dreamed of, but it wasn't a failure, and he'd learned a lot. Blaine joined a team for another new idea and began to learn more about project management.

Two years after that, a drunk driver ran into his father's car.

* * *

"Your mother was actually not in the will at all," explained the lawyer. "I understand that she's planning to get an attorney. Do you expect that she'll contest the assets awarded to you or your brother?"

Contest? Assets? This wasn't the language he was used to hearing and it felt strange and ill-fitting to be back in Ohio. "No," Blaine eventually said, shaking his head. "No, she and I are close. I look after her, anyway, she'd have no reason to fight me for...." For his dead father's money. This would take some getting used to. It was hard to face the death of even an estranged parent. 

"All right. Your father's financial advisor is ready to work with you on transferring the appropriate accounts. Are you interested in his contact information? It's a national firm, they'd also have a New York office."

"Yes," he said, distracted. This wasn't a conversation he wanted to be having. "That's fine. Thank you."

Blaine's father had always taken money very, very seriously. Between the cash, bonds, stocks, and other assets, he supposed it wasn't a surprise that he was abruptly a millionaire multiple times over. He didn't want it. Maybe... maybe Craig needed investors for a new show. That'd get the money out from under his name, which sounded like a very good idea. He hated the idea of sitting on even part of his dead father's fortune.

After an initial meeting with that financial advisor, the funeral and family affairs, and the subsequent return to New York, word came that the money was officially under his name in his own accounts. The inheritance felt even stranger, now, like walking around with a rock in his shoe. The funeral had been disorienting, but it was a specific span of time to get through. This lingered. The same money that had caused such arguments between them in the past was just _there_. His. Forever. 

In his daze, Blaine focused on a nearby bus and realized it was the third time a particular advertisement had passed. The words took a while to read; on that day English seemed like a foreign language to him. Once he did read them, it took him another few seconds to understand what they meant. Frowning, he turned to watch the bus pull away and then sank against the seat in deep thought. His car drove several blocks in silence.

"Can I change my destination?" he abruptly asked the driver. Tension began to fester in him and he felt a headache bloom.

"Sure, just edit the dropoff address in the app."

It was a huge change in direction. He'd expected to travel to his small apartment in Brooklyn Heights; instead, they were heading north into one of the very wealthiest areas of Manhattan's Upper East Side. Years ago, this lifestyle was exactly what he'd tried to imitate as a pretentious, self-absorbed teenager playacting at royalty. Blaine quietly observed the skyscraper penthouses, the fabulous boutiques, the clusters of a dozen purebred dogs being coaxed along by professional walkers. He'd never actually come into this part of the city before.

Because of that, he didn't know where any streets were in relation to each other. It took him by surprise when he arrived at his destination: the New York auction house for Sotheby's.

"Thanks," Blaine said, and idly tapped his app to authorize a tip.

The estate sales happening that day were expected to be spectacular. They'd earned advertisements all over the city's buses and taxis, after all. He imagined representatives from the world's most important museums would be there to try to score some of those Goyas or Magrittes. The jewelry on display prior to its sale was pretty, sparkly, and—he assumed—phenomenally valuable. Two old friends from Connecticut had died within the same week, and in their wills they'd requested a joint estate sale. They liked the idea of some of their old belongings intermingling in new homes.

It was unlikely, however, that such a wish would happen for the Angels they'd owned.

Ownership was already exceedingly rare, and owning two at once was even more so. The two men had owned three Angels between them. One of them had invented some important manufacturing process that gave him untold wealth, but now his Angel duo was leaving his grand Greenwich estate. They'd probably be split up during that day's auction and would be sent off to two different corners of the globe. The third one, from the friend's estate, would be sent somewhere different still.

Without letting himself think on what he was doing, Blaine got himself registered for the auction. Prior to authorization, Sotheby's wanted to see proof of his ability to pay. The Bank of America app showing the money from his father's estate served that purpose and he walked into the bidding hall.

He hated everyone in that hall on sight. Locals clustered in chairs arranged before the auctioneer's podium and phone bidders lined up against the walls. The greedy, cruel people around him were exactly who he'd wanted to be. All the people assessing the three quiet, meek Angels waiting to be bid upon, deciding which was the most desirable... all of these people were rotten, evil souls that refused to recognize the truth of what they were doing. (Just like he had been, until he watched his own slave die after weeks spent tortured inside his golden collar.)

_You're slavers,_ Blaine wanted to scream. But he bit his tongue. That would only get him thrown out of the building and he was already pressing his luck. Chances were good that the bidding would rise too high for him to match. If he did win an auction, it'd only be one; there was no chance whatsoever that the prices would stay low enough for two wins, let alone three. At minimum, two Angels were going to be sold into renewed slavery.

But he might be able to save one.

Nearly shaking with tension, he took a seat in the audience and tried not to eavesdrop too obviously on people's assessments of their options. White wings were a classic to equal a Rolls-Royce Phantom. No one in that room would ever complain about winning an auction for white wings, and a great deal of attention was being paid to the short and slender, doe-eyed Latina who bore them. She'd probably get a lot of bids.

Jet black wings weren't as broadly popular, but for those who did want them, they were the only acceptable option. The boy who bore them was also slender, but very pale and tall, and had black hair to match his wings and brilliant blue eyes like some romance novel hero. Three representatives along the walls chattered furiously into their phones as they stared in his direction. He looked like a Gothic painting and would probably be bought by someone who fancied himself a vampire expert, or something similarly tortured and absurd.

Compared to those two, few bidders had zeroed in on the third Angel. Blaine tried not to be obvious about looking him over and then reading his listing in the program. Black and white wings had been the matched pair owned by the obscenely rich man; these grey wings belonged to his more typically wealthy friend. Grey wings were still popular, though, so Blaine didn't understand why he was getting so little attention.

_Oh,_ he realized. He'd suddenly placed just what kind of bird wings were on that boy. He was as handsome as one would expect, and looked like he'd probably been born somewhere in the Middle East. Dark hair brushed his shoulders in lustrous waves. Even from his seat, Blaine could see that his eyelashes were so thick that even his unnaturally sparkling eyes looked shadowed by them. And on his back sprouted two huge, powerful wings in a dusty French grey, edged in a few bold black stripes near their bottoms.

Without moving his head, Blaine looked around the room. Both in person and on the phones, this audience represented the wealthiest upper crust of the world's great cities.

It appeared that no one living in a city had pigeon wings as their first choice.

With a silent apology to the girl with white wings and boy with black, Blaine gave up any hope of saving them. There was zero chance he could outbid the room for either one. Honestly, it was likely that the pigeon wings would go to someone else, too. Once someone won the white or black wings, the rest of the room would panic and go for whoever was left. Pigeon wings might be the third choice out of three, but for the world's richest elite, owning any Angel was always preferable to not having one at all.

The boy with the pigeon wings went up for bid first, and most people saved their money for the other options.

Less than a minute later, the gavel fell and nearly all of Blaine's sudden inheritance was gone.

_What the fuck did I just do?_ he thought blankly as he somehow rose to his feet and followed an employee to a private office. _What just happened?_ he wondered as she presented paperwork that he obligingly signed, and then helped him authorize the transfer of funds into an escrow service after signing a fresh round of contracts. _What made me think that this was a good idea?_

After that, Blaine's purchase was brought to the office.

"For artwork or antiques, we'd have you pick it up elsewhere in the building," the assistant explained, "but we know you'll want to make sure the controller functions properly before leaving."

_I'm holding a controller again,_ Blaine thought blankly as she, with precise and well-trained movements, associated the small black box with him. From the shape to its weight to the image on the front, it was identical to the one he'd held before. _I own him, now. Oh God. What the hell did I just do? I was supposed to be answering work emails in my apartment right now._

"All right," the employee said with a bright smile. "Please, go ahead and test it!" At his hesitation, her smile fell just enough to notice. "I'm sorry sir, I know this isn't the best way to introduce yourself to it, but the escrow service requires that you verify that the controller is properly functioning."

_Introduce yourself to it. It. It._ Blaine closed his eyes, nodded, and forced himself to ignore those two other Angels he hadn't saved. Right now, they were being sold to people who'd call them 'it' and mean that label. "Of course." He turned the controller down to the lowest setting possible, and made sure to only tap the outline of a male body on one hand. His new Angel still flinched.

"Terrific!" the employee chirped. "Is there anything else I can help you with?" After he silently shook his head, her professionally brilliant smile grew. "Then if you can please sign this form to release the funds from the escrow service... thank you very much! Congratulations on your purchase, Mr. Anderson. You've made an excellent decision that will last you a lifetime."

He smiled tightly and walked for the elevator, hoping his Angel— _his Angel_ —would take the hint and follow him. He did, fortunately, for Blaine had no idea how he would have possibly called for him. There was no way that his voice would work right now. _What the hell did I just do?_ he asked himself again with ever-growing panic. Maybe... maybe he could turn around and return him. Or... or he was still right there in an auction house, maybe this auction could just be... run... again....

No. He couldn't do that. God only knew who'd buy him in a second sales round, after the other two Angels were gone and every bidder would be desperate to get their hands on anyone with wings. At a far end of the hallway, he saw a white pair of wings following obediently behind another Sotheby's employee. The petite girl from the auction hall never looked up from the floor; someone had to steer her into another office.

"Come on," Blaine said quietly after a long pause, and hit the down button. His Angel said nothing. "Let's go."

When they walked into the lobby, another surge of panic hit him.

"I came here with Uber," Blaine said blankly. How in the world was he supposed to get the two of them from here to Brooklyn with Uber? Feeling dizzy, he turned and stared at the huge pair of wings attached to the man that he was now responsible for. Oh, when Blaine Anderson went impulsive, he _really_ went impulsive.

"Craig?" he said weakly into his cell phone a minute later. Craig owned vans for delivering production equipment around the city. "Funny story...."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we're moving from a heat wave into smoke pollution warnings... I feel like I should apologize to Angels for making them so sensitive to weather changes. (And, um, for everything else.)

"I have no idea what in the hell you were thinking," Craig informed him once they'd stopped in front of Blaine's building. It was a perfectly nice building, but it was not a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. Blaine's apartment inside it was a studio. And not a large one. "I'm just saying, this was probably not the most responsible use of your money."

"I am well aware of that," Blaine said as he watched his Angel step hesitantly free of the back of the production van. He looked as wary as a well-trained slave would allow himself to appear and more than a little confused. He must have been expecting to be ferried around in a luxury towncar to some new mansion, or to be placed in a private jet and whisked away to a penthouse on another continent. Instead, they rode in the back of a van with paint splattered all over the floor and were deposited in front of a five-story apartment building in Brooklyn.

The Angel would never question anyone who owned his controller. That didn't mean that he didn't want to know what on earth had just happened.

"I think," Blaine slowly said, "that I might finally take some of that vacation time I've been saving up."

Craig snorted. "Well, we don't have a show running, so it's the right time. But just try not to sprain something important."

Because Craig thought that Blaine had bought this Angel to have sex with. Because everyone thought that.

"I'll try my best," Blaine said and forced himself to smile. "Let's go," he said once the van had driven off. Passers-by goggled at the sight. Pretty soon they would start staring from ten feet away, and then five feet. Seeing an Angel up close, it was easy to forget even the most severe laws.

"You're probably wondering why you're here," Blaine said once they were locked in his apartment and he'd turned the deadbolt and placed the chain. Fortunately, they hadn't needed to pass anyone in the stairwell. "Oh, ah, you can sit, if you'd like."

The Angel didn't shake his head, but neither did he sit.

He'd been expecting someone like Kurt, Blaine realized, with fire in his eyes and resistance in each step. He needed to recalibrate those expectations. "I'm not rich," he explained needlessly. "You don't need to worry about food or shelter, I'm certainly comfortable, but I'm not rich. I'm sorry if this is a disappointment for you."

"Your home is lovely," the Angel immediately said. His voice had a uniquely lyrical accent, like he'd perhaps spent years in France after leaving whatever Arab nation had been his home.

Sighing, Blaine wondered how long it'd be until he felt like he could express his honest opinion. Blaine's studio had creative character, but he would not call it lovely. "I just spent a... rather significant portion of my inheritance on that auction. I hadn't planned to do it and I wasn't expecting to come home with an Angel, so I'm sorry if I seem unprepared. I am. I completely am."

"I'm sure you will be a very skillful owner. I assure you, I will live up to your requests. Please do not worry about me, anything you provide will be appreciated."

This was just painful. His voice had all the fire of the computerized operator when Blaine needed to call in for technical help with his internet service. "But," he tried after swallowing hard, "I... I have owned one of you before. I know that you're people."

The Angel didn't look up, but Blaine could sense him tensing.

"I wanted to make sure that you were owned by someone who knows that you are a person. You can relax. I promise. You don't have to worry about anything any more." Nothing he could have said would have confused his Angel any more. His reassuring words weren't coming across with the intention of comforting him, but as some twisted mental game that had a right or wrong response. His encouragement instead sounded like a trap. _He needs clear orders,_ Blaine decided. "Please sit."

With a look of relief to be receiving a direct command, the Angel sat.

"I'd like to know your name," Blaine said next and took a seat opposite him. "Your real name, if you can remember it. And anything else about your family, home... everything about your life before you were collared."

Rahim was a bit more than a decade older than Blaine and his wings came in at the worst imaginable time. He could no longer remember whether he'd been born in Kuwait or Iraq, but he knew he and his family had needed to flee when the bombing started. But at the same time he couldn't flee, because wings had come and he desperately needed somewhere to hide from the cartel. And while all of that was going on, the troops for Operation Desert Storm had brought the world's attention to his front door.

"Oh," Blaine said blankly. He'd never once thought of how someone might have grown their wings while they were caught in a war zone or a refugee camp. 

Rahim remembered little of his life other than memories around his capture. Perhaps fearing that Blaine would be upset with him, he apologized and said that the training center had deemed it important to let go of anything but his new duties. 

He'd been expecting someone like Kurt, Blaine repeated to himself dizzily. He had no idea how he was going to do this. "Here," he decided and retrieved a small jar of honey from his kitchen. It was always his reliable companion when a sore throat hit. Recalling how much Kurt had liked honey, he extended it and a small spoon to Rahim. "You're probably hungry? You should eat."

_Yes,_ Blaine saw with satisfaction when Rahim's eyes fluttered closed in familiar delight. _They all like honey._

He didn't have any clothes for him to wear, Blaine realized next. Where the hell was he going to get shirts with wingholes? Their wardrobe people. He'd call them up, offer to pay for personal rush jobs, and get Rahim the tailored shirts that he would need. He'd order a futon. He'd... hopefully not have a panic attack, because this might have been a spectacularly enormous mistake.

"Thank you," Rahim eventually said after he'd neatly capped the honey and licked the spoon clean of every last sticky drop. "What would you like from me?"

His hands automatically dropped to his shirt and began unbuttoning it as he waited for an answer. Blaine swallowed at the dusting of chest hair that the motion revealed. Angels still grew hair like their human body would have, but at a much slower pace. It was easy for them to maintain a chosen style once they'd reached it, while still looking like they'd just stepped into young adulthood instead of being caught as a forever-teenager.

(Once they actually got that old, of course. The only Angel he'd seen face-to-face before today... back then, he'd still looked like the teenager he was.)

God. Rahim was gorgeous as he looked expectantly at Blaine. His eyes were dark, endless pools that glimmered when light hit them, and his lashes were just as thick and long as he'd thought back in the auction hall. Full lips had stopped at exactly the point when they were most flattering to his other features. His long, thick hair begged to be touched as it framed his unnaturally balanced face.

And that beauty was why, Blaine reminded himself with an almost physical effort, he'd been bought and sold before as a sex slave. That was why he needed a safe owner now. This apartment could be his hideaway. All of this would be much easier if they could be in separate rooms, granted, but it would be safe here. Blaine would be safe here for him. 

But seriously: what the hell had he been thinking?

* * *

He couldn't stay in New York.

"You're really going to turn your life around for it?" Craig asked in disbelief.

"He," Blaine corrected absently. "And yes."

"He?" Craig repeated, confused.

"I... look. I used to know someone who got collared." That wasn't just stretching the truth; it mutilated it. For the first time in years he thought of Artie Abrams. When he pictured the man, Artie looked ready to punch him. "I just owe it to Rahim to do this, because he's miserable here. He's already losing himself inside my apartment."

Rahim had never once complained, but his misery was beyond obvious. Traffic was loud and every siren unsettled him like July fireworks might scare a pet. Blaine remembered how happy Kurt had been to take to the air—before his collar fired, of course—but now he didn't have roof access to his apartment building. Even during his time off, Blaine had once needed to run in to work, but it was more than a mile away. They obviously couldn't take the subway or a taxi, not with those wings to worry about. They'd ended up walking. Rahim, used to quiet mansions and a housebound elderly owner, had been shaken for the rest of the evening.

"So buy a home in Jersey!" Craig laughed. "Staten Island. It's not like Brooklyn's a good deal by now, you could get more square footage somewhere else."

"I can't get more than a mile from his collar," Blaine reminded him. The thought of taking a crowded ferry every day was absurd, and suburban New Jersey wouldn't be out of the question... if not for how he couldn't count on finding parking at the end of his daily commute. "Look, near as I can tell, his family's dead and his hometown is gone." He would have happily given a second Angel back to his family, but that wasn't an option this time.

"Hometown?" Right, few people thought about things like the town an Angel had once come from. For most of the world, they emerged as well-trained pets like they'd been bred and raised within their training center's walls. "Anyway, you're a show producer. Everything you do is about that, where else could you even go?"

That was a good point, unfortunately. He had enough left for a down payment and some wiggle room until more money started flowing, but most of his inheritance was gone. He hadn't been wasting his own salary before his father died, either, but New York had demanded a lot of what he earned. If he left here, where was he going to work? The West End? London was even more expensive than New York.

Wait. IP licensing... casting... staging... he'd learned a lot of applicable skills about live entertainment, and entertainment in general. It didn't necessarily have to be in traditional musical theatre. "Craig," Blaine slowly began, "do you have any connections in Los Angeles?"

"L.A.?" Craig repeated. "Seriously?"

All right, he knew very little about the city, but lots of people worked in entertainment, everyone seemed to drive, and everywhere had parking. Column A made it an acceptable substitute for New York City and Columns B and C fixed a big problem in the Big Apple. "Sure. It'd work. Yeah, yeah. L.A. Sure." He did not sound confident at all.

Craig's eyes narrowed. "Have you even been to L.A.?"

Never in his life had he visited California. "Yeah, of course. I really like it." Oh, here he was again: being impulsive. Perhaps the worst part of all of this was that moving across the entire country on a whim was actually more sensible than what he'd done in Sotheby's.

"I can make a few calls," Craig relented. "But you know their live theatre is nothing compared to ours. If you really want to go, I can put you in touch with some people, but I really think this is a mistake. Your career really has a chance to take off just as soon as we land a real hit."

"I appreciate it. I do." Blaine paused. The two of them needed to get to California, somehow. "Can I buy one of your vans?"

* * *

One month after his almost accidental Angel purchase, Blaine arranged for his small studio's belongings to be shipped to a storage facility in a town named Glendale, loaded up Rahim in the back of a ten year old van, and began driving. His whole life felt like he was on the road in winter and had started fishtailing after hitting a patch of ice. Things were already out of control, and all he could hope to do was hold on and steer through the worst of it until everything steadied.

Well, he allowed as they passed through Las Vegas, where sere mountains baked in the distance behind neon signs, driving on icy roads wouldn't be a problem any more. 

Rahim still didn't speak unless he was asked a direct question, or unless he hesitantly offered the services for which he'd been trained. He had no distinct personality that Blaine had been able to find, few memories of anything about his past, and nothing to say each time they'd checked into whatever decently-rated hotel had been waiting for them along the drive. 

He had to think this was strange. He simply had to. His most recent home in Connecticut had been a quiet, stately mansion. His first owner in Marseille had regularly sailed on his yacht between there, Cannes, and Monaco. That was about all that Blaine had been able to draw from Rahim about his history after the collar. Scant as that knowledge about his life was, it clearly looked nothing like a road trip in the windowless back of a decade-old van.

But other than answering those direct questions, Rahim wouldn't say _anything._ No opinions. No preferences. Nothing that had the slightest chance of displeasing his owner.

Blaine tried not to obsess about this, since it was in no way Rahim's fault, but he really, really had been expecting to rescue someone more like Kurt.

Rahim thought their long-term hotel in Los Angeles was very nice. The view was very nice. The oranges Blaine bought for him were very nice. He was grateful for all of it and he kept undressing each night in front of Blaine, ever since Blaine had requested that he not verbally offer himself up. Apparently, Rahim couldn't fathom not being freely available. So, if he was told not to outright ask, he'd do so with visuals. The golden California sun shone low through the room's blinds as it set, and picked out every lean muscle on his nude form before Blaine reminded him to keep changing.

Blaine could not do this. He absolutely, one million percent could not do this. He'd barely pulled himself out of his Angel-related psychological haze over the years, and during that time he'd been the one inflicting damage, not suffering it. He was in no way trained as a therapist. He had entered into this decision under entirely false assumptions about who he'd buy or what would happen next. Of course he _knew_ most Angels were turned into blank slates, he absolutely knew that, but he'd only ever met one of them. And that one didn't act like Rahim did. 

He could not do this. He couldn't even focus on choosing among the freelance jobs Craig had found for him, let alone figure out how to soothe a man who'd been enslaved and tortured for as long as Blaine had been alive. He'd bought Rahim to save him, but was he actually doing him any good? Was this state of constant uncertainty that he was keeping Rahim in just further eating away at his spirit?

"I can't do this," he said again as he stared at the latest round of texts from Craig. By now, he was admitting that out loud. "Which of these men do I want to call? I don't know!" Bright, cheerful sunlight filtered in through the window. Palm trees and some feathery branches he didn't recognize dappled the light. What the _hell_ was he doing in California?

However, he had to do this. No matter how ill-prepared he was, an innocent victim was depending on him for shelter and food and safety. He had to be in California. At least, he couldn't be in New York and he didn't want to go back to Ohio. "Okay," Blaine said and forced himself to calm down. Repeating his earlier question, he forced himself to actually make a choice. "Which of these men do I want to call? Uh. Uh. Him."

He wasn't sure why he'd made that decision among the three numbers, but at least he had made any decision at all. At least he was doing _something._ And it did get him some work.

Later that evening, as Blaine reached into a grocery bag, he hesitated. By habit, he'd been handing over a piece of fruit each night. On that day, he instead methodically laid out an apple, orange, and banana on the counter. "Rahim," he slowly said, "which of these would you like for dinner?"

Confusion swept Rahim's handsome face, and he hesitated like he was trying to figure out what the right answer was. Though his distress was obvious, Blaine couldn't give in and make the decision for him. Even though it caused Rahim discomfort now, he had to see that he was able to make his own decision for himself. It was a small one, but he needed to make it and see that he wouldn't be punished for whatever he decided.

After a long, wary moment, Rahim reached out and took the apple. "Thank you."

Progress. Maybe. "You're welcome."

* * *

_So glad you left Broadway for this_ , came Craig's sarcastic text, followed by a line of equally sarcastic thumbs-up emojis. Blaine glowered at his phone, then tossed it to the side and kept driving when the light turned green.

He'd secured a real job, with real payment and real networking opportunities, but it certainly didn't have the glamour associated with the Great White Way. Universal Studios wanted live customer entertainment for their Citywalk area, which might or might not be in the actual theme park. Blaine still wasn't sure. They needed a producer who could draw everything together: work regulations, basic choreography, actor training, everything. Blaine could do all of that and the manager at Universal was old friends with Craig, and so his first official job in Los Angeles was producing a daily sequence of flash mobs for actors in full-body Minions costumes.

"I suppose this is what I do for a living, now," Blaine explained to Rahim as a delighted crowd took photographs of the Minions. They were watching from an office window that overlooked the area; if Rahim had been visible down there, no one would have paid any attention to the actors. "I produce Minion flash mobs. I make money off of dancing Minions. I feel like I should apologize for that."

"You do not need to apologize," Rahim said instantly. At first Blaine had worried about taking him to work every day. He hadn't had any choice; Universal was far more than a mile away from the hotel. By now, though, he saw that there was no reason to fret. They were doing their work backstage, the Universal employees had been well-trained to avoid the Angel lest the studio suffer some sort of legal liability, and Rahim seemed to enjoy the changes in scenery.

Blaine tried to smile. Rahim probably didn't understand that Minions had a bit of an obnoxious reputation. Between that and how automatic the ego boost had been, his words weren't exactly reassuring.

But Rahim continued, and his words didn't sound automatic. "They all look very happy," he said, still looking down at the crowd. His fingertips lightly brushed the glass as he studied the delighted tourists.

"I suppose they do," Blaine said after also watching them. That was an audience of sorts, even if he wasn't the one commanding it, and he really had made their visit better. A real smile slowly bloomed, replacing the fake one he'd tried for. "You like to see people being happy?"

"I do."

That was good to know.

A week later the Minions flash mobs had moved out of their trial period and into their official launch, and so Blaine was free to take another contract. "These are the next jobs I've heard about," he slowly began, sitting next to Rahim on the hotel couch and showing him the latest texts on his phone. After concise descriptions of what they'd entail, Blaine asked, "Which one do you think sounds like it would make people the happiest?"

Of course, Rahim seemed nervous about choosing incorrectly. "I do not know how much money you hope to make off this," he tried to demur.

"These are the ones that I'm considering because their timelines and fees are all equally appealing. Any of them would be fine to take. There's just one decision left to make, and that's about making people happy." Blaine inhaled. He hoped this wouldn't be too far, too fast. "And I want you to pick that."

For a minute Rahim seemed overwhelmed. His dark eyes scanned back and forth and he swallowed too many times, but eventually his gaze locked onto one and stayed there. "That one."

"All right," Blaine easily agreed and committed himself to whatever Rahim had just decided. Only then did he look. Oh: assisting with a music festival for the most talented high school orchestral students in the greater Los Angeles area. The scheduling and location flow of performances needed to be arranged and smoothed. That would be fun, actually. "Great choice." His smile grew. "Thank you."

Rahim looked confused at whatever had just happened inside his own mind, but by no means displeased. "You are very welcome."

That night he again stood nude in front of Blaine until ordered to continue changing into his pajamas, but still: they'd again made progress.

* * *

More theme park work. More music festivals. Awards show after-parties. Product launches. Fan club events.

New York was called The City That Never Sleeps, but Los Angeles was giving it a real run for its money. Anything and everything was a chance to put on a show, whether it was scouting out the perfect location for a perfume launch or producing the opening sequence for a new kids' variety showcase on Nickelodeon. Blaine soon had a good reputation without the huge resume to demand a sky-high salary, and he didn't need Craig's help to get more job offers. Plenty of people wanted him while he was still affordable and he was able to juggle multiple contracts at once.

Rahim hadn't liked all of the work. Some of the production crews had been pushy, some of the locations had been too crowded or loud, and sometimes he had to wait in the shadows among strong-smelling paints and solvents instead of sitting under a brilliant sun. But every last one, he'd chosen. Blaine hadn't dragged him unwillingly to a single job, and over the months, Rahim clearly began to develop preferences about which contract to accept next.

_I wonder how he'd do with choosing something bigger,_ Blaine wondered almost a year to the day after they'd first arrived in California. Their long-term hotel had been adequate and affordable, but it felt nothing like a home even after all that time. Being in a real home would certainly help both of them settle in, and so Blaine began hunting down listings. 

He'd never needed to dip into the bit of inheritance set aside for his down payment, and had in fact bulked it up over the productive months in Los Angeles. They weren't headed for a mansion, but they could easily afford a two-bedroom house even in this expensive market. He needed a garage for their van and some privacy to ward off peeping toms, and otherwise Blaine had no clue as to what they should be looking for. Accordingly, he gathered nearly a dozen listings from across the city and showed them all to Rahim.

"Which of these look good?" Blaine began to ask. There were places near the ocean, in the hills, in quirky neighborhoods and on quiet, established streets. Once he got a feeling for what sort of homes Rahim liked, he could retrieve more similar listings and they could go from there. He didn't get the words out, though.

"This one," Rahim said in an almost awed voice as he stared at one of the homes.

Blinking, Blaine leaned over and looked at that place in Studio City's hills. The house was fine, but he didn't see any reason for it to sound so captivating. It was a cozy cottage, not even a thousand square feet, with high beamed ceilings and plenty of sunlight streaming through the windows. While those features were nice, there were many other drawbacks: an outdated kitchen, an unappealing brown slab of hillside that had sun-baked scrub bushes as its only landscaping, and carpet that would need to be replaced were only a few of its flaws. "I can look for more places in the hills?" he asked, wondering if that had been the feature that had so captivated Rahim. "Or... with high ceilings?"

"Oh. You have to look for others?" Rahim actually let himself express disappointment, now, though he of course was always quick to correct himself. "Yes, I understand."

"You want to see this specific house," Blaine guessed. "Right away."

Rahim nibbled on his bottom lip and said nothing.

"It's all right if you want to say yes, Rahim." Blaine hesitated when Rahim still looked reluctant to speak, and decided he wouldn't say anything else until Rahim found his voice again. 

"Yes," Rahim confirmed in his smooth accent. "I very much do."

"All right," Blaine said, though he still felt confused as to why Rahim was so set on this one place. It was a good deal, but it wasn't exactly charming, and he doubted a comparatively low selling price was what had caught Rahim's attention. Rahim knew that money was necessary, but had absolutely no idea about how much anything cost nor how to spend money once it was made. "Let me know if you really like the place. Assuming it passes an inspection and they accept an offer... it'll be up to you if we get it."

"I'm to choose the house?" Rahim asked, sounding overwhelmed. "Really?"

"Yes." After a year, he should be ready for that. Blaine couldn't help himself, and added, "Why do you like this one so much, though?"

Rahim ran his fingertips over the home listing's gallery. "The hill."

"You want space?" Blaine guessed. "A big piece of property?" It was a lot of land compared to the listings elsewhere in town, probably because the majority of that land was steep and unusable. That did keep the back fence far away from the house, though, which was nice.

"When I was little," Rahim slowly said. "Our house... it was close to a hill like this."

The significance of that took a while to hit Blaine. "You can remember that, now?"

Rahim said nothing for a long time, just sat there and looked at the brown hillside with a scattering of bushes. "My family had been in it for a long time." Then, amazingly, tears filled his eyes. It was the first time he'd shown a purely negative emotion. Even when he was scared by traffic or sickened by the smell of chemicals, he tried to maintain a composed beauty. "I can't remember my family, though. Just the house. And the hill." 

"I don't have anything to do tomorrow," Blaine quickly said and rested his hand on Rahim's. "We can go look at the house then." Rahim's eyes were glowing faintly gold, Blaine realized with surprise. Had Kurt's done that? 

"I'd like that," Rahim said once he'd blinked away his tears and controlled his voice. "Thank you." He took a deep breath, then let it go. 

For months, Blaine had said "You're welcome" every time Rahim thanked him for allowing a decision to be made. He said it again this time, but he'd never meant it more.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost done! When I reviewed the earlier stories I realized I'd have to deal with an event I'd said had happened in the interim years. It actually ended up serving a useful purpose here, and in the next (last) chapter everything can resolve with as nice and neat a bow as this universe allows. In that next chapter: some comment theorizing about crossing paths might just happen. :)

Thankfully, the cottage in Studio City passed a structural inspection. Blaine didn't know if he could have handled Rahim hearing that they wouldn't be able to get the home he so desperately wanted. A mortgage was approved, an offer was accepted, and Blaine finally retrieved the belongings he'd been storing. It was a good thing that he'd only furnished a studio apartment in New York; this new house really was small.

Though it did need work, there was a lot to like about it. A thick hedge along the road blocked their front windows from view and, thanks to that steep hillside, no one could come near the back. The master bedroom was as bright and airy as the pleasant living room, but the second bedroom barely earned its title. Though sunlight also filled it, it was an odd, elongated shape that couldn't fit even a full-sized bed.

"A twin bed is fine," Rahim assured him. "I will let them hang off the side."

It did sound like he was fine with it, but for the first time in years Blaine was pained by the memory of a pet's bed he'd put in his own childhood bedroom. God, how had he ever looked straight into someone's eyes, heard his voice and opinions, and then ordered him to sleep down on the floor like an animal? How had he ever been convinced that it was normal to call Kurt to his side by shocking him with that collar? 

How did the _world_ think that behavior was no big deal?

"Would you prefer for me to sleep with you?" Rahim asked when Blaine still hesitated. "You could use the other room as your office."

"No," Blaine instantly said. Above all else, the one thing he never wanted to do again was have sex with someone who wasn't allowed to tell him no. ('Have sex.' Even in his own mind, he tried to soften the label for what he'd done to Kurt.) "There's plenty of room in the master bedroom for my desk. That room will be all yours."

Rahim inclined his head dutifully. The next day, a task was presented to him: selecting his new room's furniture. They needed to stretch their dollars for a while, but Blaine knew he'd given Rahim an overwhelming amount of choice with that IKEA catalog. For a man who'd once looked scared at a decision between three pieces of fruit, this might be too much.

It wasn't. By that time the next day, Rahim had chosen every piece of furniture he wanted, made suggestions for shared spaces, and even requested some gardening equipment. Though Blaine could cover the order, it was more than he'd expected to spend so soon. He'd simply never expected Rahim to bloom so thoroughly once he was out of a hotel and into a real home.

As he began adding those selections to his online shopping cart, a long-unacknowledged knot of tension inside him began to unwind. For the first time since Sotheby's, Blaine Anderson began to think that he could actually do this.

* * *

Three years passed. In the first year, Rahim dug out many of the weeds and scrub bushes dotting their hillside. What was impassably steep terrain for a human was easy ground for him to traverse, as he could easily flutter between the few stable footholds. Despite his delicate weight—he was far lighter than Kurt had been when Blaine knew him, so early after being collared—his muscles were still strong. Rahim ripped out even large, deep-rooted bushes. During the warm months, he did so shirtless under a brilliant sun. Blaine tried not to look.

In the second year, he began shaping the lowest level of the hillside into a garden terrace. It took months of work, often interrupted by Blaine's need for them to travel around the city for contracts, but Rahim turned the lowest level of that bare, brown hillside into a flat-topped garden bed bounded by a stone wall. "We had these in my house," he explained when Blaine asked. "Someone grew food there. And flowers." He still couldn't remember his family.

In the third year, he planted vegetables in the new terrace and began shaping the next layer of the hillside into another flat bed. His motions were increasingly sure and confident, and the sight of his successful crops of spinach, lettuce, and snap peas brought open joy to Rahim's face. 

It was enough reassurance for Blaine to start dating, and to end some dates at a hotel that was just under a mile away.

Obviously he couldn't bring some new man to the house with Rahim there, but he hadn't been with anyone since Sotheby's. The drought had started to wear on him and his thirtieth birthday had turned the situation suddenly critical. He hadn't been quite as responsible with sunscreen as he should have been in the California sunshine, he wasn't sure if his brush had a bit more loose hair in it, and the endless stress of Rahim's recovery had begun to carve the first tiny hints of crow's feet. He still looked good, if he said so himself, but it was suddenly undeniable: he was getting older.

 _You all right?_ Blaine texted Rahim once he heard the hotel shower start up. Javier was only twenty-two. From a few stray comments, he probably thought Blaine's producer status had more to do with Hollywood casting than it did. So much for any lasting relationship. Javier'd certainly find someone else to flirt with once he realized the truth. Just another temporary fling, then.

 _yes you do not need to use a hotel come home._ Rahim was still slow with keyboards. No one had ever thought of getting him used to electronics until Blaine had given him a phone.

 _I do need to use a hotel._ Maybe after he'd been dating someone for a long, long time, Blaine could take him home and introduce him to Rahim. It'd need an incredible amount of trust, though. Frantically sowing his oats after a few years with a fallow field wasn't the time to find a true partner like that. 

Ah, well. One's thirties were supposed to be better than the twenties, anyway. And he had a whole decade of them ahead.

* * *

Indeed, there was a lot to like about his thirties. Blaine had done enough events by that point to earn nods for fewer, bigger contracts. Instead of scrambling around the city to find locations for one-day events, he had months to prepare with little time spent actually managing things in the field. That meant more time working out of his home, giving Rahim more time to shape his garden. The man never seemed happier than when he was working on improving their property.

"A homing pigeon," Blaine chuckled to himself when he was sure Rahim couldn't hear. 

He soon did have to insist that Rahim accompany him away from the house: they needed to drive to Burbank for a meeting at Disney headquarters. Los Angeles had managed to snipe Comic-Con away from San Diego, to the smaller city's dismay, and every studio in town wanted to outdo their rivals to welcome the huge convention. "You just got a text," Rahim said from the back of the new van Blaine had bought two years earlier. "We're supposed to meet someone at his house, instead."

"Oh? All right, I suppose. Give me the new address."

It was a nice house, Blaine thought with appreciation as they headed south into the wealthy homes overlooking UCLA. Being one of the most important people in the entire Walt Disney Company sure paid well.

John Lasseter was the head of nearly every movie-related subset of that company, along with overseeing creative production for the parks. He was far too busy to handle efforts at one specific convention, but it wasn't a surprise that he wanted to talk to the contracted producers in person. Many of the company's characters were like his children, Blaine imagined: they needed to be watched over. 

John greeted Blaine at the door in person, extended a polite greeting to Rahim, and did so without a hint of pretension to match his expensive surroundings. _Wish I knew him well enough to ask for for his esthetician,_ Blaine thought idly as he walked inside. The man didn't look young by any means, but he didn't look as old as he was, and whatever laser peel he'd used to reverse sun damage had more than done its job. "Beautiful house."

"Thanks," John said. "It gets a little less beautiful when we turn the corner."

"What?" Blaine chuckled when he saw. "Oh." No, most multi-millionaires in Bel-Air wouldn't showcase a two-foot tall model of Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear on a console table.

What he saw next was far more surprising, though in retrospect it shouldn't have been. He'd seen how beautiful the house was and he knew perfectly well the sort of salary Lasseter must be making. This was the sort of man who could easily afford to buy an Angel and keep her in a spectacular mansion, rather than blowing nearly an entire inheritance and then moving into a tiny hillside cottage.

"It's wonderful to meet you," said Lasseter's Angel. "Thank you so much for coming by. What would you like to drink?"

John sighed and turned to her. "Saba, you really don't need to do that."

A bright smile spread across her dark and fine-featured face. Across her scalp, her hair had been pulled into a multitude of narrow braids. After those short lengths, Saba's thick, curly hair was freed to form a black halo around her face. Her clothing was a simple white sundress, perhaps to avoid competing with the most spectacular pair of wings Blaine had ever seen. Though they had the shape of a large, eagle-like bird like any Angel grew, her wings shimmed from top to bottom with rainbow hummingbird iridescence. "We're in the middle of an early heat wave and they just came from outside. Do you want to be a terrible host?"

"Fine," John relented. "I try not to let her fall into any hospitality training they might have done in the centers," he confided once his Angel was busy in the kitchen. "But if she really wants to do something...."

"She's opinionated," Blaine said with approval as he watched Saba assess various drink options, shake her head at some, and grab for others. Rahim had politely taken a seat at the far end of the room and stayed quiet after that. Saba's behavior couldn't be more different. "Was it hard to get her to share her preferences again?"

John looked at him appraisingly until Saba returned with drinks in hand. They both accepted whatever she'd prepared, as did Rahim when she walked over to him. With that attended to, Saba began moving around the house and adjusting anything she saw that didn't meet her apparently discerning standards. It did in fact remind Blaine of a hummingbird's darting movements. "You've tried to get yours to be more opinionated?" 

Realizing John had asked him something, Blaine looked away from Saba and blinked. "Hmm? Oh, yes. Rahim... his past owners didn't allow for much of that, it seems." A sigh erupted. "It's been a challenge, but he's doing better." Blaine lifted his drink, but then blinked again and lowered it. Wait. "You call Saba 'her.'"

"You call Rahim 'him,'" John pointed out.

Blaine's hand worked nervously around the glass. It was damp and cold with condensation. He really didn't want to lose this job, but he had to have this discussion. "Of course I do," he carefully said. "He's a person."

"And so is she."

Blaine's pulse pounded in his ears. He wasn't the only one who'd bought an Angel to protect them from worse treatment? "You bought yours to save her, too?"

With a deep sigh, John turned and looked over the back of his couch. Saba was busy rearranging his Blu-Ray collection. "No. Some friends pressured me into it when they saw the sale happening. They couldn't believe how her wings looked. I'd just started making enough to cover it and somehow I got talked into bidding. I had no idea what I was doing." He shook his head. "Half an hour later, I realized that I'd bought a person. A person!"

"Half an hour, huh," Blaine repeated morosely. Some people needed a lot less time around an opinionated Angel to have their eyes opened, it seemed.

"Some people want educated Angels," John explained, not catching the shadows in Blaine's eyes. "They get some sort of weird thrill from owning someone who's not expected to be bright, but can out-debate the guests at their parties. I'm just glad she was so outspoken. It was a real dose of cold water, and God knows I needed it."

"When was that?" Blaine wondered. The one excuse he had was that he'd been a teenager during his hateful idiocy, and no one expected a teenager to behave well.

John hesitated, and his voice sounded very odd when he answered, "Oh, during early development on Tangled, I think." He paused again. "Other people figured it out much earlier. They didn't need to own one first. Oprah actually saved three. Three, can you believe it? No one has three. She didn't want to get too much attention for having a trio, so she passed one of them along to Viola."

Viola Davis? Blaine blinked. He'd always wondered how she'd been able to afford an Angel when someone as wealthy as Michael Bay was infamously frustrated over never landing one. Surely she couldn't have outbid the Bays and Tarantinos of the world. So many celebrities owned Angels. Which of them were true, terrible owners, and which had actually bought them to help?

Unfortunately, John didn't assuage his curiosity about Hollywood, and changed the topic. "It's less common among corporate people, I think. Gates is good, but most CEO types want the next shiny trinket upgrade after their private jet. Overall, they're less likely to jump on the latest social justice bandwagon than people in entertainment."

Blaine nodded slowly. "The estate auction I bought Rahim from... the sellers were businessmen."

"There are times I make fun of L.A.," John confided, "with all its... green juice and yoga and cold-pressed whatever. But I learned to like how much some people care about things." He turned, ready to ask something of Saba, but his question died and a bemused smile grew. "Am I interrupting something?"

At the far end of the room, where Rahim had sat, the two Angels were busy chatting. Saba met John's eyes and smiled, unconcerned, but Rahim looked like he'd been caught at something. "Yes, you are," Saba replied. "Very serious business."

"Fair enough," John chuckled and turned back. Blaine couldn't help but watch their discussion at the other end of the room for a few seconds more. It did seem to be very serious and he had no idea what they might be saying. If Saba was east African, as he guessed, perhaps they shared a religion? Was Rahim even religious, now, or had he ever been? Blaine should ask.

"Anyway," John continued in a more professional tone, and Blaine realized he should be paying attention, "our fan club is a big deal, but we can't secure guaranteed tickets to the convention for them. That's why it's so important to have these off-site events...."

An hour later, he'd covered his plans for the concerts and actor sessions at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. (They'd been able to secure that for their own use, at least.) "Very nice to have met you," Blaine said as he shook John's hand at the front door. "And you," he added for Saba.

"You should start growing fruit trees in the terraces!" she shouted after them. Ah. That had apparently filled at least part of the Angels' hour together.

"Well, that was nicer than it would have been at corporate headquarters, don't you think?" Blaine asked Rahim once they were out of the narrow, twisting hillside streets. Rahim didn't say anything, and so Blaine turned to look at the back of the van at a red light. "Is everything all right?"

Rahim looked up, startled. "Oh? I'm sorry, I...."

Odd. Rahim was usually so attentive to him. That was a good sign—Rahim's whole existence shouldn't focus around his owner—but it was a marked change. "Rahim," he began, and hoped he wasn't overstepping, "would you like to be, ah, praying at home? I'm not sure exactly how you'd observe any beliefs, but if you'd like to, it's certainly fine."

The suggestion seemed to bewilder him. All right. The two Angels probably hadn't been talking about religion, then.

"I haven't for a long time," Rahim said. That made sense, Blaine supposed. Even the most faithful people might find it hard to stay adherent after their lives changed, and who knew if he'd been in that category to begin with? Especially since he'd only been ten or eleven when collared. 

"Just a thought. Never mind." Blaine wondered what they'd been talking about so seriously, then.

* * *

Shortly before Blaine's thirty-seventh birthday, the ground began to move. He'd felt numerous earthquakes since relocating to the West Coast, but nothing like this. The ground rumbled like he was on a stormy sea, and he instinctively reached out to keep the pens from rolling off the desk in his office nook.

 _It's not stopping,_ he realized with sudden concern. It was so loud. The planet was screaming in a low, feral pitch. _It's getting worse,_ he thought next and his fear spiked. This was not a normal earthquake. This was something that could kill him.

 _"Rahim!"_ he yelled over the noise like a runaway train, and let go of his pens to fall to the floor. _"Get under something!"_ All of the lessons he'd learned over his years in Southern California surged to the top of his mind and, knowing that he didn't want to get hit by any falling objects, Blaine dove under the nearest large piece of furniture and waited to ride out the worst.

That desk wasn't prepared for one of the timbers from the high ceiling to crack loose and land on it. If he'd been thinking beyond raw instinct, he wouldn't have chosen that modern, sleek frame to shield his life. If he'd been thinking, he never would have bought a glass desk in the first place. The glass top barely hindered the heavy timber as it crashed down.

The timber pinned Blaine to the floor as the world finished rolling. Shards of glass from his broken desk rocked along with the quake's last moments, including the thick piece that had pierced his wrist. He could feel it move inside him, cutting like a ragged scalpel.

He was going to die. The words didn't come in any neat, coherent order. His body simply knew. The beam pinned his chest and he couldn't draw breath, and that one deep, jagged point of pain in his arm was fiery hot as blood streamed from it. He was going to die. It hurt. Everything hurt. The world was still too loud even though the rocking had stopped.

His fragmented mind clawed one thought together: _I don't want to die._ His good arm pushed at the beam as his lungs burned, but he couldn't get to an angle that did any good. It didn't move. Panic began to burn as fiercely as the pain from that shard of glass, and he didn't know whether lack of oxygen or blood loss would do the job first. _I don't want to die._

A face appeared above him, seeming to be at a crazy angle through his pain and panic. Sunlight streamed in through broken windows and a gap in the roof, and it gleamed like fire as it reflected off Rahim's golden collar. One wing hung low behind him to trail against the ground; it must have broken. Tears streamed down Rahim's face, but they didn't seem only from the agony of those shattered bones. "No."

Oh God. What was going to happen to him? Blaine had never set up a will. 

"No," Rahim said with more purpose and reached down to pull at the beam on Blaine's chest. It was hard for him to move it, but he managed. Even as dizziness began to overtake Blaine to pull him down into the inevitable dark, instinct made him take a breath. A second followed. A third. Rahim sobbed as motion jostled his broken wing, but he managed to turn the beam completely aside.

Blaine's voice wasn't working, yet. Everything was still confusing. "Don't move me," he tried to tell Rahim, but his mouth didn't obey his thick mind. He was probably going to bleed out before any ambulance could get there, but if that glass twisted more, he definitely would. _I don't want to die,_ he thought, maybe for the last time, and closed his eyes as tears trickled down his dust-covered cheeks.

"No," Rahim almost snarled in a voice like Blaine had never heard, and ripped the glass free from Blaine's arm in a sure, swift arc. _No, no, you just killed me,_ Blaine thought dizzily as his eyes opened again from the shock. He was barely able to understand Rahim's next movements: taking that bloody glass and slicing down the length of his own finger, then wrapping that finger against Blaine's wrist.

A few seconds later, warmth flowed back into Blaine's arm. Everything that lingering darkness had stolen from him returned, and he took a longer, deeper breath. Soon, the pain in his wrist was gone. The rest of his body ached, but it was like that one wound had never happened.

"Your blood," he realized, still staring up at the broken ceiling. "It heals." Of course. Of course it could. If it could resurrect, of course golden blood could simply heal. A man had once been able to walk again, and the secret reason for that was so straightforward.

"Are you all right?" Rahim asked desperately.

After another few long, steady breaths, Blaine nodded. Rahim hadn't made a deep cut on his finger and it'd sealed quickly, but that had been enough blood to close the narrow puncture near Blaine's artery. He still felt bruised, battered, and dizzy, but he was no longer about to die. Wincing, he propped himself up on one elbow. "Are you...." Trailing off, he remembered Rahim's broken wing.

"It hurts," Rahim confirmed, tearful, when he saw where Blaine was looking. 

With another wince, he forced himself to sit all the way up and then reached out the hand Rahim had just healed. "Can I?" Blaine asked softly, gesturing at the unbroken wing that stood above Rahim's other shoulder. "Until it's all right?" 

He could only imagine how painful a broken wing must be, especially as it dragged limply behind its owner over an uneven floor strewn with rubble. Angels healed small wounds quickly, so for the wing to still be injured, there must be multiple, serious fractures putting that agonized expression on Rahim's face. Not once had Blaine ever touched Rahim's wings, but he unfortunately knew from experience that they caused overwhelming pleasure. That pleasure might balance things out until the broken wing healed.

After Rahim nodded, Blaine began to stroke his healthy wing with slow, gentle movements. As soon as he touched the Angel, Rahim's entire demeanor changed. Like a human being put on morphine, Rahim was no longer trapped inside his body's agony. He arched toward Blaine, gasping with that face that had never looked more beautiful, and whimpered in what could only be pleasure.

When his injured wing stood above his shoulder again, Blaine had to force himself to pull back his hand. "All better?" he asked in a breathy, shaking voice. Next, he made his hand lay flat against the ground. He'd only been touching Rahim as pain relief, and now Rahim was healed. He didn't need to be touching him any more, and he didn't need to see that enraptured expression.

"I saved you," Rahim said in wonder. "It actually worked. She told me we could do it and I did it."

She? Who? Oh. That hummingbird Angel?

As Blaine tried to remember that Angel's name, he didn't see Rahim moving toward him and so didn't expect the deep kiss that claimed his mouth. "No," he protested as soon as Rahim broke off for breath. This was the one thing he'd swore they'd never do.

"Please," Rahim said. "Let me know you're alive."

Oh God, he wanted to. Even in a broken house that might have glass on the bed, with a broken city around them, he wanted to. Never in his life had he been so close to death, and Blaine did indeed want to grab onto hot, passionate life with both hands now that he'd made it out the other side. 

But what he'd done at Sotheby's was his chance at redemption. And redemption did not allow for this.

Probably.

"We need to turn off the gas line," Blaine said after a few centering breaths. "And check for any other problems. That'll help me _stay_ alive."

Rahim had to accept that logic, at least, but he surprised Blaine with another kiss before pulling away. "I'll check for any fires or other problems from above, then be right back."

Redemption probably didn't allow for this, Blaine repeated as he pushed himself up onto unsteady legs, and went to discover how badly his city had shattered.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took longer than I expected because I realized there was more I needed to cover, which involved going back and expanding some bits in both sections! Sorry for the delay. In this chapter, some things in the world resolve. In the last, resolutions happen in Blaine's life.

Los Angeles wasn't prepared for the Big One, but then, no city could have been. Their cottage had undergone a full structural inspection and its roof still tore open as beams fell. Other houses, Rahim reported after landing from his aerial inspection, had collapsed entirely or slid away when the hillside under their foundation did the same. There were plumes of smoke in the distance that were likely to spread before the fire department contained them. Countless sirens were just at the edge of their hearing. Worst of all, Rahim said while rubbing at his sensitive nose, was the smell of death on the wind.

Blaine had to think hard; everything was so raw and confusing. What was the first step? People would be frantic with worry, he realized, and fumbled through the mess to find his phone. _I'm okay_ he posted, then turned it off to save the battery. "You're really all right, now?" he verified as he walked into the living room. A crack gouged the full length of its wall.

"It hurt to fly," Rahim admitted. "I was probably not healed all the way. I didn't go high."

"You should stay down here," Blaine agreed, distracted. Would that crack spread? Only if they had some massive aftershocks, likely.

"Down here with you," Rahim added.

Blaine said nothing. In the shock of seeing their shaken house, he'd actually forgotten the kiss Rahim had given him. In some ways it was more overwhelming than the earthquake. For now, he needed to push it aside. The gas was safely off. Water didn't flow, but neither did it spew from a busted pipe; whatever damage had blocked that stream was probably further down the hill. The power was gone, of course, and he was momentarily glad that Rahim had essentially turned them into a vegetarian house. There was some cheese that might go bad, but no meat, and they had plenty of fruit and vegetables that could be eaten raw until workers began to restore service.

"Let's check the foundation," he decided next. "To make sure the house isn't about to settle more."

By evening, it seemed likely that they really had made it through. Aftershocks did come, and he heard screams during the first few, but they were nothing like the first quake.

"Go to bed," Blaine said at the end of that long day. He rubbed his eyes, then wished he hadn't; they were covered with dirt.

Rahim seemed to want to suggest something beyond sleep, so Blaine reiterated, "Go to bed. Try to lie still, so your wing can heal up, all right? It might be useful for you to fly and look around for people, so you'll need to be able to fly for a long time. Take it easy tonight."

That convinced the man to retreat, but he squeezed Blaine's hands firmly before leaving him alone. 

In bed at the end of that very long day, he began to realize how sore he was. There was a deep bruise on his chest from the beam, small cuts from broken glass, and various other bumps and lacerations that he'd picked up as the world collapsed. The only uninjured part of his body was the arm that Rahim had healed. Nearly up to its elbow, it lacked any sign of the day's disaster except for a grimy coating of dirt.

Rahim could totally heal him, he thought as he studied his arm in his warm, still bedroom. He could barely see the limb in a city that had never felt so dark, but he could make out its silhouette enough to watch it move against the moon and stars. Hours earlier, he'd been convinced that he would never move again. He wouldn't ask for that gift of healing, of course; Rahim had needed to slice himself open to offer his blood, and it would be a terrible thing to request.

Still, this was big. As exhaustion began to tug at him, barely hindered by distant shrill sirens, Blaine accepted that he hadn't yet figured out how big 'big' was. _I'll probably learn soon enough,_ he thought with surrender and tumbled toward sleep.

* * *

Just like bodies with golden blood healed, so did the City of Angels. Progress was slow, and often required ripping down old buildings instead of repairing them. Nearly everything constructed before earthquake code updates was written off as a loss, from historic Craftsman bungalows to downtown brick warehouses. The biggest skyscrapers still stood, though. Their modern steel frames had rolled with the terrible tremors, and although they needed repairs, the most significant elements of the skyline remained intact. It was oddly reassuring.

Rahim's garden kept their whole street fed until grocery trucks started running again. At first, their immediate neighbors asked about the avocado and date trees they saw standing over the fence, but with all the food the terraces bore they also handed over spinach, strawberries, and cucumbers. Marsha and Frank had been living next door since before Blaine bought the house, he soon learned. With how paranoid he'd been about keeping Rahim safe, he'd turned their little cottage into a fortress.

"They're nice," Rahim said, smiling, as he watched their neighbors carry a basket of produce down their driveway. The fires had all been stopped days ago, and water sometimes flowed as the pipe system was repaired, but the power had yet to come back on. Blaine wished they had solar panels, but with the shade trees it had never been feasible. They'd need to wait for lines to be restrung. "I'm glad we were able to help people."

"So am I." If the shortages went on much longer—and they probably would—there was a lot more of Rahim's hillside to harvest. He'd terraced the entire thing by now, and had nearly every vegetable, fruit, and nut that would grow in Southern California's climate. Once turned into usable garden beds, it really was a lot of land.

Caught up in studying the remaining food on Rahim's terraces, Blaine didn't notice the man coming in for another kiss. He would never throw him aside, so all he could do was stay rigid and unyielding even as his body begged to lean in. "Don't," he said softly when Rahim pulled away.

"I want to," Rahim promised. 

"I can't." Rahim wanted more of a reason, he could see, and so Blaine added, "I own you."

Something in their dynamic had definitely changed after Rahim chose to save his life. "But I really do want to," Rahim murmured and stroked down Blaine's face. This was all the confidence he hadn't possessed for decades. He was the one who could survey their neighborhood for safety and had sailed above the hillsides to listen for cries of distress. He was the one whose garden was feeding them and their neighbors. He was the one who'd decided whether Blaine would live or die under that shattered desk.

For the first time since Sotheby's, it didn't feel like a penitent owner and his protected possession inside that house, but two men. Blaine swallowed. "I shouldn't," he tried, though he was no longer quite as sure why.

Rahim looked at him with those dark, endless pools under his mile-long eyelashes, and said nothing. 

That night, under the warm breeze from the still-broken roof, Blaine woke to the sound of soft footsteps. Rahim was nude in the moonlight. "You always told me to turn away," he said when he saw Blaine wake. "And I will if you say it again. But it has been a long time. I know you. I know me. And I want to."

Nothing escaped Blaine, either in protest or assent. His heart rumbled like another aftershock. Was he still dreaming? It felt like it.

"I could have let you die," Rahim pointed out when he stayed silent. "You didn't know what I could do to stop your bleeding. If I were unhappy... I could have let you die. I didn't. I wanted to be here." In the continued silence, he took another step forward.

_I'm supposed to say no,_ Blaine thought in a haze as, seemingly on its own, his head tilted up to meet Rahim's kiss. _I can't remember why, but... I'm supposed... to...._

Sunlight streamed in the next morning through his impromptu skylight. Blaine yawned and stretched, only to realize with a jolt that Rahim's naked form still dozed next to him. _Oh,_ he thought with a stab of soul-deep shock. _Oh no._ Guilt choked him. 

Rahim had wanted this so obviously, and he'd been confident like he'd never before managed. Consent shouldn't be in question. Blaine had rejected his kisses twice and given him every opportunity to pull back, and Rahim had still come into his room of his own free will. He obviously no longer thought that he had the duty to offer himself up like a slave. He hadn't done so since they were in that hotel room, years and years ago.

This was something he'd chosen, when he could choose very little. Blaine swallowed with the unpleasant realization that he wanted this, too. Worse, he didn't know if he had the strength to end it once it had started. This wasn't like _before._ He was saving Rahim, not torturing him. Instead of forcing an Angel to the ground, he'd given him every chance to walk away. This was different. Right?

_I still own you,_ Blaine thought in a distant, fuzzy haze when Rahim stirred, smiled with his perfect face, and leaned up for another kiss. _This isn't right, I still own you._

Redemption, it seemed, was not a constant climb.

* * *

"No," he found it in himself to say a week later. "Really, no."

Over the years, he'd become aware of more people who'd bought Angels to save them. Some were famous, many were not, and he couldn't see any of them doing what he'd allowed himself to do that week. To buy someone who'd been kidnapped as a child to serve as a sex slave, and then touch them like that... no matter how purposeful Rahim had been on that night, it wasn't real consent. It couldn't be.

It was probably easier for those other people to say no. Most of them had found husbands or wives, instead of becoming so paranoid that they never invited anyone into their house. By no means had Blaine spent his decades since Sotheby's alone; his professional accomplishments were beyond satisfying, and he'd gone through a steady stream of boyfriends. But while his career kept spreading its branches and brought plenty of friendships into his life, those boyfriends always left in the end. 

It had always felt like he had a partner waiting for him at home, even though that partner was platonic. Even though Rahim was the one person he couldn't possibly begin a relationship with, he'd effectively interrupted every other romance. It was no wonder Blaine had given in after so long, even if that still wasn't an excuse. At least he'd found the strength to end it.

Rahim didn't complain when Blaine ended their fling. By now, though, he let his displeasure be known, like a free person instead of a well-trained slave. 

That didn't matter, Blaine told himself as he shoved a stone back into place in one of the terrace's retaining walls. Rahim was working further up the hill. Whenever he caught Blaine looking at him, he held his gaze for a long, weighty moment before turning away. It didn't matter that Rahim was showing a more forceful personality, or that he'd said yes. So long as Blaine had to tote that controller around, the answer had to be "no."

He'd just forgotten that for a little while, in the stress and mess of the earthquake. Hopefully he wouldn't forget again.

* * *

"I should give you a little more," Rahim said as he helped adjust Blaine's suit for the latest charity dinner he was overseeing. After the dust of the quake had settled and they could reliably wash their faces and shower again, they'd both realized that Blaine, implausibly, looked healthier and less stressed than he had before the Big One hit. Nearly a week passed before they understood, nearly at the same time, that Rahim's blood affected a human's age as well as health.

Rahim hadn't given him much to heal that puncture wound from the desk. That amount had translated into a subtle facelift, rather than outright turning back the clock. So long as they kept everyone wondering whose Blaine's skillful doctor was, they would still be in safe territory. 

At first, Blaine's reaction was to deny Rahim offering him any more blood, and so he clasped Rahim's hand and held it. "I don't want you to cut yourself." If he needed to say no to Rahim offering pleasure, then of course he'd need to say no to pain. 

Rahim needed an owner, though. Blaine wasn't worried about picking out a cemetery plot, yet; that was decades off. But who knew how long he would need to last? If they did have to stretch out his years, it'd be better for both of them if it happened with his body now, rather than dancing along the edge of a more fragile senior existence. He'd certainly prefer it that way.

"Or... just a little," he relented.

With a smile, Rahim slit the pad of his index finger and slid it into Blaine's mouth. He tasted like all of Blaine's favorite flavors all mixed together, like chocolate and caramel and rich red wine. It should have been a heavy taste, but it was somehow light like a summer breeze. After a few seconds the taste vanished and Blaine hurried to a mirror.

Fine lines: smoothed. Cheeks: tightened. Hairline: a little lower. This blood, he admitted as he studied himself, would be an easy addiction to form. If someone asked as they continued with this, maybe he could explain that he was the subject of experimental plastic surgery procedures. All of the procedures. On everything.

Rahim seemed pleased at what he saw, and kissed him on the cheek before steering Blaine toward the garage. "You shouldn't be late."

He almost told Rahim not to kiss him like that, but bit his tongue. It had been more than a year since they'd shared a bed and they'd never been intimate again. He probably shouldn't allow any movement back toward sexual contact, but there was a reason that, on that night, Rahim had dared to kiss him. That reason had to do with the charity dinner they were about to attend.

It was a very big charity event, for Angel rights worldwide had just been given their biggest victory yet. As of ten days earlier, Sweden had outlawed ownership. They were the first nation to do so, and the hope of sudden change had swept everyone involved. Rumor had it that the other Scandinavian nations were considering similar laws. Excitement was palpable.

As the van's self-driving system took over, Blaine turned to study Rahim as he stretched out in the back of the cargo area. The man was in a slim-fitting suit that they'd had customized for his wings and he looked spectacular. Over the years he'd let his hair grow a bit longer, and now it hung just past his shoulders instead of barely brushing them. His face was finely chiseled, masculine and perfect, and that perfect face smiled back at Blaine when he saw him looking.

No human could ever look perfect in comparison. Being middle-aged did nothing to soothe his vulnerable ego, even if he had taken care of himself. The reason for that night's event filled Blaine's mind, and despite his best efforts he thought ahead to after all nations had outlawed ownership. When the collars came off, would Rahim leave? Or would he stay?

Giving him the freedom to leave had been one of the biggest reasons that Blaine had forced Rahim away, and then found the ability to say "no" as many times as was needed. Right now, Rahim couldn't leave if he wanted to, and that meant sex wasn't an option. In the future, he should also feel able to leave Blaine behind. If he was in a relationship when the world changed, he might not feel free to fly away in pursuit of the life that had been stolen from him long, long ago.

But what if his collar came off, and he still wanted to stay?

Los Angeles wasn't perfect for Rahim. Blaine doubted it'd be perfect for any Angel, despite the city's nickname. In the rare times after wind and rain cleared out pollution, Rahim perked up enormously. He didn't act sick when the normal band of brown returned, but he was running at ninety percent in comparison to those happiest days. He'd never slept more deeply than when the city's hum had temporarily ceased after the earthquake. Now he was back to waking at least twice per night, which he'd done for so long that Blaine had never considered that it might not be normal for him.

Even if L.A. wasn't perfect, he did seem happy. He loved his garden, he loved flying over the hills, he loved watching summertime fireworks from their roof. Did he love Blaine? Maybe. Blaine didn't know. They both cared about each other, that much was clear, and once Rahim's collar was off and he was free... maybe....

A human never looked perfect in comparison to an Angel. But if Blaine were younger, and he could relive those years while kissing a man without a golden collar... things might feel pretty perfect.

"What?" Rahim asked softly, and Blaine realized he'd been staring at him all that time.

If he asked Rahim now whether he planned to say with Blaine once his collar was off, it'd be pressuring him. He'd say yes to make Blaine happy, and so Blaine could only ask when his true freedom had actually been granted. "I'm just wondering when the other countries will get their acts together," Blaine lied.

"Soon, I hope."

Yes, there was suddenly a lot to hope for.

* * *

Over the decades, Blaine had been disappointed in his home nation for countless reasons, big and small. He'd been waiting for this change for such a long time that the seemingly interminable delay on Angel rights was almost more than he could take. One after another, more nations joined the group of those that acknowledged that slavery was always wrong, whether or not the person inside shackles had gone through a bigger change than most as they grew up. New Zealand. Malaysia. Canada.

Around him, some of the world's wealthiest people whined that they might soon lose their favorite toys. All these years, and the United States still hadn't caught up.

With an almost painful effort, Blaine bit his tongue as Mitch, the CBS executive overseeing the Oscars, finished ranting. "You know what they're like!" Mitch said, gesturing off at the room where Blaine had left Rahim. "They're like five year olds. Everything scares them. Mine'd starve in a week without me."

Blaine made a non-committal noise. Mitch was a piece of human garbage, but this was an incredibly valuable contract he'd been given. He was overseeing the pre-Oscars red carpet events and the pay was phenomenal. If it were just for him, he'd walk away from this man he so desperately wanted to punch, but most of the money was going to charity. With pressure to free Angels now coming from right over the Canadian border, it was the time to apply national pressure south of the border, as well.

"Angels do need help," Blaine said when he realized Mitch was waiting for a response.

"See, you get it!" Mitch said, content in the certainty that he'd just been agreed with, and began gesturing around the space that would soon hold the biggest celebrities in the world.

One of the only satisfactions he got from that meeting, Blaine thought darkly as he watched Mitch walk away, was that he'd looked up how old the man was. Every day of that age was creased deeply into his face. Clearly, his Angel wasn't giving him an escape hatch out of normal human mortality, while Blaine had inched his way backward too slowly for anyone to comment upon.

The other satisfaction came on Oscar night. "Check's in the mail," he murmured as he helped guide foot traffic across the red carpet. The world's biggest A-listers couldn't possibly be handed off to some production assistant. Blaine took personal responsibility for making sure that the top-tier celebrities were sent out to the major news stations at a steady, respectful pace, and that they were kept comfortably shaded and hydrated in the meantime. They couldn't afford to sweat under their makeup.

Ivy McDonald, one of those A-listers, smiled faintly. No one looking in their direction would have any suspicion that she devoted most of her free time to fighting against Angel slavery. "Thanks."

She had more than enough money to buy an Angel, but never had. She couldn't stand the idea of knowing that she had a slave in her house, she explained the one time he'd asked. Not that she judged him for owning Rahim, she quickly added, and she knew that direct action was often best, but it was just something she couldn't do. Perhaps that failure had heightened her drive to see the world change. 

Her dress was phenomenally complicated, and so he took that excuse to get near her and adjust all its elaborate folds before she stepped in front of the cameras. For the past five years, the trend had been for women to wear sheer dresses and for men to go shirtless under their suit jackets; this year, they'd snapped back to formal, traditional looks and nearly given every designer whiplash in the process. "How close do you think we are?" Blaine murmured as he checked the satin of her dress under some overhead lighting. No one had ever been able to make a wrinkle-free satin.

"Hard to tell. I'd guess within two?"

Two years. Two years, and Rahim might be free.

"There's more work to do," Ivy murmured as he checked her tiny microphone. "Once they get freed, there's still going to be more fundraising. A lot of them are going to be homeless. Some people are already setting up refuges, we'll need lawyers for ones who aren't let go, I'm sure there will be political lobbying going on...."

"Just let me know," he said back just as quietly. He had a career that left him trusted with the Oscars Red Carpet and logistics for the Rose Parade, which meant that Blaine Anderson could charge high enough fees to help a lot of people. Ivy had those connections with people who were doing the hands-on work, and so he'd send the money wherever she felt it was best spent. If that meant paying for lawyers, so be it.

Once, Rahim had asked if they should move to a bigger house. Blaine had never considered the idea and immediately turned it down. That money would be better spent on other uses. Besides, it'd mean leaving behind the garden terraces Rahim had spent so many years building. 

Ivy needed to walk away, then, and departed with a quick, knowing smile. The celebrity she replaced in front of the cameras had brought his Angel with him. Looking at Ivy, you'd never know that she despised the man; he hadn't bought that towheaded slip of a white-winged girl to save her. Blaine was more open in his judgmental glower, and tried to rein it in before he moved to the next celebrity in the interview queue.

That night, Ivy lost her Supporting Actress statue.

He doubted she cared for very long. Three scant weeks later, Washington shocked everyone by abruptly setting every Angel within national borders free.

* * *

"It feels strange," Rahim said as he touched his bare throat with trembling fingers. Though it was almost impossible for him to tan, there was still a faintly pale line circling his neck. They'd figured out how to remove his collar, but the spike in his spine still jutted a few millimeters above his skin. Some people, Blaine had learned, had sawed between collar and spike, leaving it flush; he'd just fumbled until the collar band popped loose. Eventually they'd file the metal down, but for now, Rahim's long hair covered the small golden stub that proclaimed he'd once been owned.

"How do _you_ feel?" Blaine asked after Rahim had felt over all the exposed skin that had spent decades under a slave's collar.

It was a bigger question than he'd meant to ask, he soon saw. "I don't know. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, now." Rahim, his hand still trembling against his neck, turned to look at the garden terraces. Some plants still fruited during warm California winters, while others had been seeded in the fall for spring growth. At minimum, he'd been expecting another full growing season before the collars came off.

"You can do anything that you want," Blaine said gently. "You're free." Some garden beds hardly compared to the total freedom he'd been granted, even if he had expected to tend them.

"Anything that I want," Rahim repeated. His eyes glistened and his hand shook more.

With abrupt clarity, Blaine remembered standing inside a long-term hotel room. When they'd first moved to Los Angeles, Rahim had no idea how to be anything but a dutiful slave. He didn't know how to make decisions, didn't know how to express opinions. Over the years here, he'd learned how to say yes and no. He'd found interests and confidence came along with them. In France and Connecticut, he'd become accustomed to the life of an abused, obedient slave. Here, he'd pushed the boundaries of merely technical slavery.

But to be completely free again, like he hadn't been since he was a child somewhere near the Persian Gulf? That was as overwhelming as the decisions Blaine had asked him to make long, long ago.

Back in that hotel room, Blaine had presented him with specific options and asked him to choose between them. It'd helped. Maybe it'd help again.

"Rahim," he began, and tried not to let even a hint of his own feelings creep into his voice, "do you want to stay, or do you want to go?"

That perfect face looked back at him, startled. It was such a simple question, put like that.

"You can go if you want to," Blaine said. "Of course you can." The thought tore at his heart, but he didn't let any of that into his voice. There were Angel refuges, after all. Ivy had mentioned them. If he asked her, she could tell him right where he'd need to point Rahim to live a new, independent life away from him. Maybe Rahim would want to travel back home, if he could find whatever town he'd been born in. Maybe he'd want to do a dozen other things with his new, wide-open future, and Blaine wouldn't need to know about any of them.

Or maybe he wanted to stay.

"Don't make me leave," Rahim said in a rush. "Please."

Blaine's heart thudded again like it had when Rahim showed up nude in his bedroom. "It's all right if you leave," he said one last time, "but of course you can stay."

Rahim's hand rubbed nervously over his bare neck. "Can I say yes to you, now?" His big, dark eyes swam with tears. "Of course I'm staying. Will you finally let me say yes?"

Blaine's eyes must have said his own 'yes,' because Rahim let out a choked cry of delight and closed the space between them. His strong, smooth hands caught Blaine's face and drew him into a kiss. Decades rushed through Blaine's thoughts as their mouths worked hotly against each other, like his entire life had been rewound and fast-forwarded in confusing jerks. He could barely say what year it was, had lost track of who they were in the world, but "yes" anchored in his mind like an anchor in a storm.

They could say yes, now.

Rahim could say yes. Every Angel could say yes.

The world had changed, and it was so, so much better.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm doing some adjustments on the last Kurt story (I realized that it, too, needs some expansion) but that'll start posting soon. Everyone needs a happy ending in this terrible world I'd created, after all.

"You can come if you want to," Blaine reminded Rahim as he straightened his tie in the mirror. By now, years after Angels' freedom, he once again looked like he was in his thirties. They'd been incredibly cautious about the amount of blood he took. According to what he'd told Hollywood, Blaine had become obsessive about chemical peels, non-invasive laser surgical procedures, occasional visits to Seoul for more complicated surgery, and foreign supplements that had snuck under the FDA's radar. His restoration was so slow and subtle that someone who'd previously accepted those excuses wouldn't have any ground to make a new, sudden protest.

Even after the restoration, his face still looked coarse and unbalanced next to an Angel's. When Rahim looked at him like that, though, he actually felt very nearly close to perfect.

"I will come for your sake," Rahim offered. The last words were hit hard. 

"You don't like these events, do you?" Blaine laughed. "You never have. It's all right, you can say it."

"They are... loud," Rahim said. "But this is in a hotel, right? We could get a room there."

After taking Rahim's shoulders in his hands, Blaine stepped back and studied him. For all these years they'd never been more than a mile apart, and his sweet, introverted homing pigeon was always happier near his garden. "You stay home," Blaine decided. "If you want to fly over to Brentwood to meet me at the hotel, I'll get a room and we can sleep there. Just remember to stay low, so you don't ping the radar." Flight restriction was another feature that didn't make Los Angeles—or any big city—quite perfect for Angels, but it was a minor concern. "Otherwise, I'll come back."

He saw Rahim's uncertainty. "At that time of night," Blaine reassured him, "it'll only take me twenty minutes to get home. It won't add much onto my day, don't worry, and I'll be rested for tomorrow. I can treat you to a fancy hotel, or we'll sleep in our own bed. Just call me after dinner and let me know. I left the schedule on the monitor."

"All right," Rahim said and actually managed to laugh. "No, I don't like your crowded events." He had to be so cautious about his wings and he'd never liked noisy settings. It was good to see him admit it.

"Just let me know," Blaine reiterated, leaned forward to give him a kiss, and then left for his latest contracted event: managing one track of the biggest charity telethon week in decades.

Every televised night had its own topic, but there were dinners and other behind-the-scenes fundraisers going on over all of the seven days. A grand, post-quake hotel on Wilshire was hosting events for three of those topics: the homeless, Angels, and arts education. Blaine had been offered the Angel production role, since the people in charge had suspicions about what he'd done with Rahim, but he'd turned them down in favor of the night on education. To most of the country, he'd look like a former slaveowner; being in a romantic relationship with the man he'd once owned would only make him look worse. It would be a PR crisis in the making for a night about improving Angels' status as newly minted citizens, and so the responsible decision was to pick something else.

"Has a PA checked the teleprompter?" he asked as he ran down his checklist in the hotel ballroom. They needed to make sure that all speeches were updated, especially since one of the speakers had needed to be replaced two days ago. At the reassurance that they'd been reviewed, he moved to the next checklist item. "Phonetic pronunciations added to the transcripts?" Check. "All cables are tied and covered?" Check. "Sound checks?" Check.

The speeches were ready to go, then. He could move on to the next area of concern: lighting. After that, he'd only need to worry about a couple dozen more areas in which something might go wrong. _This is why they pay me the big bucks,_ he smirked, though he'd waived his fee for the charity week. Few people appreciated how much backstage busywork was needed to make sure that the unexpected didn't take anyone by surprise. 

The night kicked off with its flood of Hollywood do-gooders, and for a while things went smoothly. He patrolled the perimeter of the ballroom, looking for any tiny problems before they became big enough for anyone else to notice. None emerged. His checklist had done its job.

When their cocktail hour was winding down and he needed to worry about upcoming speeches, Blaine's obsessive, watchful eye was interrupted by a friend's arrival. Emily was only in her forties, but was already an accomplished event manager. ("Only" in her forties, he repeated, even though she probably looked older than he did.) She was producing the Angel event track, and since their dinner was supposed to be in a different wing of the hotel, he had no idea why she was there. "Anderson. I need advice."

"Sure, what's wrong?" Something had clearly taken her by surprise, especially if it was big enough to make her leave her post.

"One of the speakers had an emergency and left. People were expecting to hear from him, and considering the topic and all, I think it might be a big deal. How screwed am I?"

He frowned. Speakers vanished at the last minute all the time; why was Emily so concerned? She was more experienced than this. She'd found off-the-cuff presenters at the last three awards shows she handled. "Let me see the schedule," Blaine allowed when her nerves remained frayed. She was good, she had this, but sometimes you just needed to hear from someone else that things would be all right.

"This guy," she explained as she handed over a tablet and tapped on one name in the list of speakers. Fortunately, Emily hadn't fully let go of that tablet before Blaine saw who she'd pointed to.

Kurt Hummel.

It was like he'd taken a physical blow to the stomach, and Blaine nearly doubled over from the shock. "Uh. Are _you_ okay?" Emily asked as his face paled, but he couldn't find any words to respond.

That schedule was for the Angel event. Even if that were a common name, which it most certainly was not... for that topic, it had to be him. It had to be the man who had served as an inadvertent compass in Blaine's life, but who he hadn't thought of in face or name for literal years. "You said he left?" Blaine asked, dizzy. He'd been there? In the same hotel?

Something in his expression must have hinted at some tiny shadow of the truth. "Oh, you know him? Yeah, he just took off." Emily snorted. "Maybe literally, for all I know." It really was him, then. "One, what do I do, and two, how screwed am I?"

Right. Right. She needed his help. He couldn't think about this right now. "Uh." Blaine rubbed the space between his eyes, then rattled off a few celebrity names. They were all former owners who'd bought their Angels for rescue, and none of them were currently listed as speakers. An Angel speaker was a big deal, which was why Emily was so concerned at Kurt's disappearance, but those celebrities were big enough to soothe the crowd. "See if any of them are here. Say I mentioned them to you and they'll understand."

Emily brought up a different schedule and nodded. "Yeah, Jerome gave a speech twenty minutes ago at the homeless event. I bet I can find him and ask him to come over to ours and say something. I can namecheck you? Great, thanks!" She took off at a run, her high heels clicking against the marble tiles, and Blaine sagged against the wall.

He hadn't considered how the man he'd once owned would have continued living a new, different life for all these years. An adult's life. His body would have continued changing for months after returning home, and he'd edge toward looking twenty instead of sixteen or seventeen. It might have taken a decade or more to look like he'd gained those last few years of young adulthood, but the man who'd been scheduled to speak at this charity event would not have been the traumatized boy who'd been sold for pocket change in an Ohio garage.

One part of Blaine wanted to look up more about the Angel events, to see the headshot used for the speaker lineup. To read the biography next to Kurt's name. But another part of him, he realized with shock, didn't. Why? 

Everything was suddenly very confusing and so he shoved all of those thoughts away. He still had to finish his own night's event, and his topic would be televised in two days. There was so much to prepare. So much to handle. So much (not) to think about.

* * *

Rahim didn't want to come to the hotel that evening, unsurprisingly. It was fortunate that there was so little traffic late at night, because Blaine needed to get away from the crowded streets and into their hillside retreat as soon as he could. If people still needed to drive their own vehicles, he probably would have crashed three miles into his trip.

As his van rolled down the dark freeway, and then steered toward the appropriate exit, Blaine's thoughts began to swirl in an ever-murkier pool. He still hadn't brought up anything about Kurt from the schedule Emily had given to him, and the longer he went without doing so, the less he wanted to. He couldn't have explained why if he'd been asked, though. 

When he pulled into their garage and pressed his thumb against the interior lock, Blaine suddenly realized why he'd been left not only startled by Emily's schedule, but sick with unease. The reminder of Kurt's existence was shocking and enormous, but it wasn't what had him the most nervous. Kurt wasn't the one he needed to worry about.

"What's wrong?" Rahim asked as soon as Blaine walked inside. It must be that obvious, then.

How was he supposed to explain this? "Let's go out back," Blaine decided after a moment. There was a small patio table out there, and Rahim always preferred open air. Even if airplanes overpowered the stars and even if the thrum of traffic made it all the way up into the hills, Rahim was happier outside. This wouldn't be a good conversation, and anything to put Rahim at ease would help make it a tiny bit better.

"What's wrong?" Rahim repeated when they'd seated themselves on the patio. Since Blaine didn't seem headed for an immediate crisis, his voice had gentled.

"At work, I saw the name of someone I... knew." This was going to be hard, and by now he understood the full extent of what he needed to fear. "He was a speaker in another ballroom."

"All right," Rahim said. His brow furrowed in faint confusion.

"He was the first...." A deep breath. "The first Angel I owned."

"Oh," Rahim said. Blaine might have said that he'd run into an old co-worker or classmate. "How was he?"

The reason for that relaxed response was that never, in all their years together, had Blaine described what his first period of ownership was like. He'd wanted to put Rahim's mind at ease in those early, tortured years, and did that by reassuring him that he was with an owner who recognized him as a person. Now he was in a house where he had his own private space, where he was encouraged to establish boundaries, and where he regularly made decisions about the course of their shared life. Once Rahim had that confidence, why was there any need at all to mention the awful past?

"I don't know. He needed to leave for an emergency before we saw each other." Blaine took a deep breath. "Which was for the best."

Rahim's brow furrowed again. "I'm sure he would have wanted to say hello."

"Rahim...." Blaine couldn't meet his eyes for this. "All this time, I have been misleading you. Terribly. When I bought you, I made it sound like you were with a safe owner. Like you were with someone who would have never seen you as anyone other than a person who needed to be protected."

"But that's who you are," Rahim said after a confused moment. 

For a long while, Blaine said nothing as he studied Rahim in the moonlight. If Rahim flew away after this confession, he wanted to remember that face all through the second journey into his senior years. "It wasn't who I was when I was given him as a present. I was exactly like the other owners you had. I tortured him with his collar. My friends cut him open. I raped him. He died in front of me."

A small breeze kicked up. It ruffled Rahim's hair and wings, but that was the only movement from the other man.

"After a while, I realized what I was doing. I realized everything I'd been told about him—about all of you—was wrong. I realized he'd been a person during all of that, and I took him home to his family." He couldn't stand seeing Rahim's blank face any more, and Blaine looked down. "I bought you because I knew you were a person... but I also bought you because I had something to make up for. I'm sorry I've lied to you."

Rahim looked down, too, but at least he was sitting there in deep thought instead of flying away. "It's hard to imagine you behaving like that," he concluded. "After everything."

"I'd never had reason to question anything the world taught us. You know what it was like, back then." At Rahim's renewed frown, Blaine reconsidered his words. No. He didn't know. Rahim hadn't spent his childhood idolizing Broadway and Hollywood celebrities, dreaming about spotlights, or working toward future glory. Before Kurt, Blaine had thought Angels were only for the most elite... but anyone dreaming of a future life of fame, fortune, and controllers was privileged to begin with. The vast majority of the world wouldn't empathize with ignorant childhood dreams of slave ownership.

"How long?"

"When I was still in high school. Oh, you mean how long I had him?" It was hard to remember, precisely. That time in his memories had collapsed into a painful golden knot. "It was during one summer, but I'm not sure how for much of it." However many weeks it'd been before he understood the truth, it had been a lot longer than half an hour, he thought sickly and recalled Saba flitting confidently around the Lasseter house. "His father lived nearby, and I sold him back once I realized everything."

Rahim risked lifting his eyes to meet Blaine's. They glittered in the moonlight. "What's the worst thing you did to him?"

God, he'd named so much and Rahim wanted even more. The sexual violence he'd referenced should be the obvious answer, but to Blaine's dismay, something else poked up above that terrible knot of memories. There was something uniquely cruel about this one, especially since he'd been so careful and gentle with Rahim. He admitted, "I forced him to decide whether I'd take his name away or call him 'it.'"

"He gave up his name?" Rahim instantly guessed.

Startled, Blaine nodded. There had been so much certainty in Rahim's answer. He'd thought it would be a harder choice.

"The worst moment in my training," Rahim said, "was realizing that I was seen as a thing. I would give up my name a hundred times over instead of being an 'it,' if I could decide." He looked away. His profile studied the terraced hill that rose behind them. It marked all the years they'd spent in that house. Normally it would look flush with life, but under the moonlight, it was hard to see how much had grown. "This is difficult to hear."

"I should have been honest before now. It would have been terrible to tell you everything when you were vulnerable, but I shouldn't have waited this long." Perhaps he would have been left to die under that broken desk if Rahim had known, though he doubted it very much. Still, for all these long years, he'd been putting on an act. A partial truth was half a lie.

"I'm going to sit out here and think for a while," Rahim eventually said. "You should go to bed. You have work tomorrow."

"Tomorrow." Blaine swallowed. "Will... you still be here tomorrow?" Only now was the true weight of his admission becoming clear and he didn't know if it might end what they had. All these years, Rahim had thought he was the target of a heroic rescue. Instead, he was an attempt to make up for something horrific. Everything they'd done together had an oil slick on top, tainting it. Until that night, Blaine hadn't fully realized what he'd hidden.

Rahim smiled faintly. "This is my only home, and I have to pull weeds. Of course I'll be here."

That wasn't nearly the reassurance it could have been, which was of course why Rahim had chosen to answer like that. Blaine deserved it. This wasn't the sudden, total betrayal he'd seen in the eyes of a college choirmate decades back, when Blaine realized he was seen as a dangerous stalker instead of some destined hero, but it was still a betrayal. He opened his mouth to apologize to Rahim, then closed it. He thought about saying how much he loved the man, but that didn't make it out, either. He couldn't pressure him. He needed to make his own choice.

He fell asleep before Rahim came to bed, and if his light weight did disturb it during the night, Blaine never felt it. The other half of his bed was empty when his alarm went off. "I'm going," he said out the back door. Rahim was standing there, staring up at his terraces in the morning sunlight. The man nodded vaguely but didn't look back.

If this had been a normal contract for an awards show or movie premiere, he wouldn't possibly have been able to concentrate on his work that day. Checklists and seating arrangements seemed wildly unimportant compared to the knowledge that, back in their hillside cottage, Rahim was thinking about how the man he loved was also a man who'd tortured a slave like him into bed. This was for a children's charity, though. This was to keep the arts in public schools across the nation. It wasn't easy to maintain his focus, but it was possible, and that was a small success.

"Please still be there," Blaine whispered when he looked at his schedule and saw that it was time to head home. Tomorrow, they'd be the televised charity topic. It would be one of the busiest days he'd ever had in his career, and he had no idea how he'd manage it with tears streaming down his face. "Please, please still be there."

When he turned, he saw that Rahim wasn't at the house. He'd flown to the hotel.

"Rahim?" Blaine asked in a shaky, hopeful voice. Passers-by glanced at the Angel on their way to the lobby.

"You have a busy day tomorrow." Rahim smiled. "We should stay here tonight."

"We?" he repeated and tried not to hope. Not until he knew for sure.

"I didn't know that boy you were," Rahim began. "It was so hard to hear that he shared your face, because I cannot imagine you doing any of those things. I sat and tried to picture any of it. It should have been easy, because those were things I went through. In the end, though, I couldn't. I couldn't picture you doing those terrible things. I know who you are now, not who you were then. And I love who I'm with now."

Blaine inhaled a shaky breath. "Really?"

"Thanks to what you've done for me," Rahim began slowly, and took his hands, "I can remember flashes of my family's face. That sounds so small to many people, but... but it's everything. And with who you are now, I have family again. After tonight, yes, I will be in the house. Our house."

"I love you," Blaine whispered after throwing his arms around this gentle, perfect man he'd been lucky enough to hear forgiveness from. Some tiny part of his soul had felt parched and withered all these years, even as he attempted to water it with all this other work and all these other gestures. In the end the full truth was enough, and his gardener was making things bloom.

"I love you, too."

All of this was more than enough.

* * *

"I got the mail," Rahim said, more than a year and a half later, as he tossed it idly onto the kitchen counter. "Why do you still get the print version?" he asked as he picked up the latest copy of Vanity Fair. Most magazines from Blaine's youth had long since gone out of business, or moved solely to electronic versions. Vanity Fair was a bit of a dinosaur for even offering a print edition, and they only did so for annual subscribers.

"I know it sounds old-fashioned," Blaine said as he gathered relevant mail from the pile, "but photography just looks better in print than on a monitor." More than anyone else in the business, Vanity Fair sank money into beautiful, well-composed photography. Blaine worked with some of the celebrities they interviewed, those celebrities often liked to fawn over their recent best photos, and so it only made sense to keep up with their latest bragging rights.

"It does sound old-fashioned," Rahim laughed, and leaned over the counter to kiss him before gathering up his own materials. The heirloom tomato seeds he'd ordered had arrived. "I'll put on soup soon, so it has all day to sit before dinner."

Now that Rahim shared the master bedroom, the small space he'd once used had finally turned into Blaine's dedicated office. It actually had been a little difficult over the years to maintain a professional office space in his bedroom, and so he was glad for the room now. 

The first order of the day was to reply to the most pressing work messages, and to ignore the latest questions about which plastic surgeon he used. Not for the first time, Blaine was glad that he hadn't ended up in front of cameras or spotlights. Actual celebrities found it so much harder to get away with using Angel blood to any noticeable extent. Next, he read through a few job proposals and let two percolate in the back of his mind while he browsed his physical mail.

They'd taken a good photographer to Sundance that year, Blaine thought with appreciation as he flipped through Vanity Fair. The magazine had always been known for the quality of its interviews, and sure enough, every new page was fascinating. He'd never heard of this documentary before, but the filmmaker was insightful even in print summary and sounded like an Oscar shoe-in. Two pages later, one of the most recently profitable directors was photographed inside a Sundance screening theatre, holding his arms out like the entire room was his devoted kingdom. Appropriate.

When he turned the page again and saw a new photograph of a split-rail fence against a snowy backdrop, it took him far too long to understand who was leaning against that fence. The winter Utah setting was spectacular, but it was nothing compared to the inhumanly turquoise eyes that stared back at the reader. 

He'd known that Kurt still had changes ahead of him. His face back then had been pretty, but flawed like any human's would have been so shortly after golden blood started flowing. With that recent change and with his young age, he'd still possessed teenage awkwardness that Blaine had never seen on any other Angel out in public. The man in the photograph wasn't awkward. He was as perfected as Rahim, though with an almost androgynous beauty instead of Rahim's clearly masculine angles, and he looked completely confident.

Against the snowy backdrop, his white wings weren't apparent at first glance. That was, Blaine realized, exactly why they'd photographed him like this. Letting wings fade into the distance made the reader see him before them.

_I was right,_ Blaine thought with distant amusement as he stared at the magazine. He'd seen Kurt in summer, but as pale as he was and with those icy eyes... he looked even better in winter. Just like he'd thought, long, long ago.

With a deep, steadying breath, he began reading the interview.

All this time, Kurt had been building one of those Angel refuges that now kept hundreds of former slaves safe and free. It was the largest in the world, he learned from editorial comments around the quoted answer, and had already been applying pressure to affect changes from national laws to renewed trafficking protections. He'd attended Sundance for two reasons: one, many of the celebrities in attendance had been working with him over the years, and now that it was safe to do so, he thought they were owed public thanks. Two, a friend of his had retired from policy-making and was devoting all of his time to film-making, like he'd spent so many years doing as a hobby. 

Artie's documentary on the progress of negotiating Angel civil rights was already in its initial editing stages. Kurt hoped he'd be able to attend the next Sundance to watch it be screened. He had a partner who'd want to come see it, too. They sounded happy together.

After finishing the interview, Blaine took a long, steady breath, set down the magazine, and looked up information on the refuge. It matched an address he barely remembered. 

For a long time, he said nothing. His heart felt full but not heavy and he didn't know what to do next. Somehow he turned to the window and looked out at the sunny hillside beyond. Rahim saw him staring and held up a hand. Blaine waved back, and they shared a smile that was full of love.

What Blaine ended up doing next, to only his mild surprise, was calling his financial advisor.

"Of course you have the money," his advisor said, "but you're sure you want to do a lump sum? This big?"

"I do."

Kurt was doing something very important. Back in Sotheby's, Blaine had seen that he only had enough money to help one Angel. He'd spent all the years in-between bulking up his bank account in one of the richest cities in the world, and now there was a way to help hundreds of Angels at once.

"All right," his advisor relented. "I'll get their tax ID for your charity write-offs."

Blaine pictured that check arriving. He pictured Kurt opening it and seeing the name on the return address. After all these years, the boy who'd owned him would make a sudden reappearance. This check would come from a time of teenaged torture, not from one adult to another long after they'd walked their separate paths. The confident, important man in Vanity Fair would be reminded of the years when the world said he wasn't important, and he wasn't a man.

His eyes trailed over Rahim again and Blaine turned back to the monitor. He wasn't seeking forgiveness any more, he realized. With Rahim's blood inside him he was living his life a second time, and this time he'd found absolution. This money wasn't about him, and for some people, the kindest thing he could do was be forgotten. "When you send the donation?"

"Yeah?"

He smiled, secure in what he did that day, and breathed in the warm scent of life from his open window. "Make it anonymous."


End file.
